Trump Knew Of Schneiderman Allegations In 2013, Lawyer Says

NEW YORK, NY — President Donald Trump and his embattled personal attorney knew about allegations of abuse against former state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman five years before they became public, a new federal court filing says.

In a letter Friday to the federal judge presiding over a case involving documents seized from Michael Cohen, the president's longtime attorney, the lawyer Peter J. Gleason detailed how he passed information about Schneiderman's alleged abuse to Trump in 2013.

Two separate women came to Gleason's office about a year apart with claims that Schneiderman, who resigned this week, was "sexually inappropriate with them," Gleason wrote to U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood.

In 2013, when the second woman approached Gleason, he said he decided against referring the accusatons to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and instead discussed them with Stephen Dunleavy, a retired New York Post columnist.

Dunleavy offered to tell Trump about them and apparently did, evidenced by a phone call Gleason later got from Cohen, according to the letter. Gleason says he told Cohen "certain details of Schneiderman's vile attacks on these two women."

"At a minimum, I wanted these women to realize that somebody believed them, and that their horrific experiences of Schneiderman would not be brushed under the rug," Gleason wrote.

Gleason told The New York Times that Trump would make the allegations public if he ran for and was elected governor, something he reportedly considered in 2013.

Gleason's letter asks Wood to seal from view any records in which Cohen "memorialized" their conversations about Schneiderman's alleged assault on the two women. The judge ruled that Gleason must back up his request with a legal memo by May 18 or withdraw it.

Schneiderman, a Democrat, resigned Tuesday after The New Yorker published allegations that he hit, choked and psychologically abused four women. Schneiderman has contested the accusations.

Dunleavy reportedly denied Gleason's account. He told CNBC he may have spoken to Trump "once since I retired," but didn't discuss the Schneiderman allegations with him.

"I didn't talk to Trump about this," Dunleavy told CNBC, adding that he's never spoken to Cohen.

Gleason told the network Dunleavy may have actually talked to Trump's secretary, but he got a call from Cohen the next day regardless.

The Schneiderman scandal shook the New York political world, as they completely contradicted Schneiderman's public persona as a defender of women's rights and other progressive causes.

But a tweet Trump posted in September 2013 suggests he may have indeed known something damaging about Schneiderman.

"Weiner is gone, Spitzer is gone - next will be lightweight A.G. Eric Schneiderman," Trump wrote, referring to former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner and Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who fell to their own sex scandals.

"Is he a crook? Wait and see, worse than Spitzer or Weiner," the tweet says.

Ronan Farrow, who authored the bombshell New Yorker story with fellow journalist Jane Mayer, said the accounts brought to Gleason were not the genesis of their report.

"None of our leads came via Trump people, and we had no knowledge of Gleason," Farrow tweeted Friday. "No surprise there were other investigations—legit ones and political smears—as allegations were so widespread. But ours didn’t flow from any of that."

Read Gleason's full letter below.

(Lead image: Former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is pictured in September 2017. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)