News Analysis: Trump lawyer raid could be bad news for U.S. president

By Matthew Rusling

WASHINGTON, April 10 (Xinhua) -- With this week's raid of the office of U.S. President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, things are looking pretty bad for the president and could get worse, analysts said.

"He could be the person who knows enough to bring the president down," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua, referring to the president's personal attorney Michael D. Cohen.

"This raid is ominous for Trump. Cohen is his personal attorney and privy to many intimate details of Trump's business life," West said.

Monday saw FBI agents raid the New York office of Cohen. The agents confiscated emails, documents related to business records, as well as documents allegedly connected to a payment to a woman who was formerly a porn actress.

The actress, known as Stormy Daniels, claimed to have had an affair with Trump over ten years ago. She was allegedly paid hush money.

The raid was the latest among FBI's investigations against the president, as the FBI has been seeking to find a connection between Trump and Russia, after Moscow allegedly meddled in the 2016 presidential elections.

"He handled sensitive issues, lawsuits, women's complaints and the like," West said. "If he has legal jeopardy and accepts a plea deal, that would be very difficult for Trump."

"He (Cohen) could tell stories and provide documents that would undermine many of Trump's stated defenses. As such, he is a crucial person in the Trump investigation," West added.

Christopher Galdieri, assistant professor at Saint Anselm College, told Xinhua that it's hard to say whether this will hurt Trump until more information comes out.

"But this is a major development... This sort of raid is not the sort of thing that's done lightly," he said.

"I think it has the potential to hurt Trump legally, since Cohen has much to offer Mueller in terms of testimony and evidence. And politically, at least a few Republicans seem to be realizing that the investigation needs to be protected," he said, referring to the special investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, into the alleged collusion between Trump and Russia during the U.S. presidential elections.

"In the big picture, I think this shows that the Mueller probe is both growing and getting closer to Trump. Cohen is about as close as you can get without being a member of the Trump family," he said.

"There's also the possibility that the raid will implicate Cohen in activities that would fall under the purview not of the Mueller probe, but of the U.S. attorney in New York, or New York's attorney general, both of which would be additional fronts for Trump to worry about," he said. Enditem