Search warrant documents made public Tuesday show the FBI used highly secretive and controversial cellphone sweeping technology to zero-in on President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer when agents raided his New York City home, hotel room and office last year.
Agents using a Triggerfish cell-site simulator tracked the whereabouts of Cohen's two iPhones to a pair of rooms a floor apart at the Manhattan hotel where he and his family had taken up residence while their apartment was being renovated
The FBI said in its April 8, 2018 warrant application that it was only using the device to locate Cohen's phones, not to intercept his calls or text messages,
Separately, the agency obtained logs of the numbers Cohen was calling and texting, and reams of location data ‐ including for the time period just before the 2016 presidential election, when he negotiated hush-money payments for women alleging they had sex with Trump. They also got permission to press Cohen's thumb to the phones or hold them up to his face to unlock them.
But it was the agency's use of cell-site technology that stood out amid nearly 900 pages of documents from the Cohen raids.