You should probably read the summons. First off, Fry confessed back in November.
On question 1: Fry does the searches and immediately calls Avenatti. Read paragraph 11.
Fry did not "have the information" and then contact Avenatti. He got the information and called Avenatti upon retrieving it. He had Avenatti's cell phone number BEFORE he had the SARs.
On question 2: That's not too hard. Anyone who has been to law school and practiced law for a while knows all kinds of people in all kinds of regulatory agencies. These are people one regularly comes into contact in the course of doing ordinary legal work. Asking "how" is kind of beside the point, since there is no question, again if you read the summons, that he did find such a person.
Furthermore, it is not a matter of someone who "knew of the info". There are literally thousands of employees in agencies of the Treasury Department who can access SARs. Avenatti, and the entire world, was certainly aware that Cohen had wired $130k to Davidson, and that would trigger a SAR. That, again, is an ordinary part of law practice. Lawyers regularly handle large payments for settlements, escrow, and a bunch of other reasons. Once in a while the bank will call to ask whether the lawyer knows what the transaction is for, who are the parties, etc.. Within the limits of client confidentiality, you answer those questions.
So there is no mystery that there would have been a SAR generated in association with the Daniels payment, since it was over $10,000. Avenatti figured there were more potential payoffs and found himself a dupe willing to look them up.
Returning to the significance of "Fry confessed back in November." This matter was known about to the investigators and Fry since November 2018. It was filed under seal on February 4. Since Fry already knew about it, then who do you suppose the under seal filing was to keep it from being known?
And, finally, Cohen was under criminal investigation by prosecutors who had access to all of the SARs, his banking records, and much more. I don't know too many "patriots" who seek to interfere with criminal investigations by feeding the ego of self-serving narcissists.
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