EXCLUSIVE: 'I pray they sue me!' Avenatti dares Trump and Michael Cohen to drag him into court for releasing bank records about Stormy Daniels payoff that an IRS employee allegedly stole

• e-mail

Attorney Michael Avenatti would welcome civil lawsuits from President Donald Trump and his former fixer Michael Cohen, he said Friday, following news that some bank records he used to establish an infamous Trump payoff to a porn star were stolen. 

'I pray they sue me,' he told DailyMail.com via a text message from Chicago.

'Maybe we can then get to the truth about their criminal enterprise and conduct.'  

Avenatti said Thursday on Twitter that he's not concerned about criminal liability from receiving and using Cohen's bank records, which San Francisco federal prosecutors say an Internal Revenue Service analyst pilfered and leaked to him.

The Bank Secrecy Act, he wrote in a tweet, does not apply to him in this case since he is neither abank nor a government official.

Neither the president nor Cohen has indicated a desire to take Avenatti to court.

But Friday's comments are his first on the prospect of civil lawsuits tied to the fast-unfolding saga of John C. Fry, who is charged with unlawful disclosure of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). 

I DARE YOU: Michael Avenatti, famous for representing porn actress Stormy Daniels, told DailyMail.com on Friday that he would love for President Donald Trump and his disgraced former fixer Michael Cohen to sue him for releasing bank records that he got from an IRS thief

Federal prosecutors in San Francisco have charged Internal Revenue Service analyst John C. Fry with leaking bank records belonging to Cohen (center); the records documented a payoff to Avenatti client Stormy Daniels – money he hid from the IRS and lied to banks in order to get

The Cohen payoffs were meant to silence Daniels and a former Playboy model who both claimed to have had affairs with the then-married future president more than a decade ago

Banks files SARs with the IRS when they identify questionable transactions. 

Fry allegedly turned over the stolen documents to Avenatti, and confirmed confidential banking information in the SARs to a reporter for The New Yorker, who is not named in the charging document but appears to have been Ronan Farrow.

Information about the bank transactions that were the subject of the SARs became public in May when Avenatti published a memo outlining them.

'Neither I nor R. Farrow did anything wrong or illegal with the financial info relating to Cohen’s crimes,' Avenatti tweetde Thursday, noting that 'the courts have found that the [Bank Secrecy Act] does not apply.'

'And if we did (we didn’t), then every reporter in America would be jailed and unable to do their job.'

Suing Avenatti would open a plaintiff to the three-ring circus of legal discovery, a pre-trial process in which opposing parties get access to documents and other materials that could impact a case.

What begins as a focused effort, however, can sometimes become a fishing expedition. Legal experts have said President Donald Trump would find his life upended and be forced to disclose tightly held documents related to his financial history if he should be embroiled in a lawsuit whose central thrust is money. 

Avenatti is a lawyer for pornographic actress Stormy Daniels, who has said she had an affair with Trump more than a decade ago.

Cohen, who is due to begin a three-year prison term in May, pleaded guilty in August to campaign finance violations related to 'hush money' paid to Daniels and another woman to keep quiet about alleged sexual liaisons with a then-married Trump.

He also admitted lying to to banks to obtain improper loans used to pay Daniels, and lying to the government to avoid paying taxes.  

Cohen has since pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws by making illegal payments, among other charges. 

Fry has reportedly refused to accept a felony plea deal which would have him avoiding any amount of jail time, according to CNN, so prosecutors are expected to seek an indictment against him by the end of the month, on this and other charges.

Fry acknowledged releasing the information about Cohen while working at the IRS office in San Francisco to attorney Michael Avenatti, according to an affidavit filed with the court.

The SARs allegedly obtained and released by Fry showed information matching a $130,000 payment from Cohen Daniels, along with a Cohen company, Essential Consultants LLC, getting large payments from organizations, including a company associated with a Russian oligarch who donated money to Trump's inauguration fund, pharmaceutical giant Novartis, and AT&T, which owns CNN, according to court records. 

Fry is accused of downloading and disseminating suspicious activity reports about Cohen, which showed his illegal $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels

Fry acknowledged releasing the information about Cohen while working at the IRS office in San Francisco to attorney Michael Avenatti, according to an affidavit filed with the court. Avenatti is a lawyer for Daniels. Avenatti (right) and Daniels (left) are pictured at the AVN Awards in Las Vegas on January 26

The documents also 'discussed possible fraudulent and illegal financial transactions' made by Cohen in Singapore, Hungary, Malaysia, Canada, Taiwan, Kenya and Israel, between 2016 and 2017, the complaint said.

Fry downloaded a total of five SARs from the IRS database in May, and then became alarmed when two others were not accessible, according the criminal complaint filed against him. 

As it turns out, the additional SARs that Fry was unable to open and download had been designated 'restrictive access.' They were not available 'because they were related to a sensitive open investigation,' the complaint said.

At the time Fry accessed the SAR documents, Cohen was under investigation by the Manhattan US Attorney's office for financial crimes to which he eventually pleaded guilty

At the time Fry was trying to access the documents, Cohen was under investigation by the Manhattan US Attorney's office for the crimes to which he eventually pleaded guilty.

Avenatti cited in his tweet on Thursday a 2015 First Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which he said shows some Bank Secrecy Act restrictions wouldn't apply to him.

Judge Jeffrey Howard wrote that 'it would appear that neither the Act nor the regulations restrict third parties – that is, parties on neither the financial-institution side nor the government side of an SAR exchange – from disclosing the existence or non-existence of a particular SAR.'

Avenatti tweeted a screen capture of a portion of one of his own court pleadings in which he quoted Judge Howard, without including the words 'it would appear that.'

The excerpt focuses only on whether a third party would be violating the Bank Secrecy Act by 'disclosing the existence or non-existence' of an SAR. It makes no mention of whether it's illegal for him to publicly release its contents.

Asked to comment on the discrepancy before this article was published, a bristly Avenatti texted: 'Read the case.'