FBI Investigating Columbus Vice Squad Over Stormy Daniels Arrest

When Stormy Daniels was arrested in July, during a strip club performance in Columbus, Ohio, her attorney Michael Avenatti immediately speculated that the bust may have been politically motivated, “because of our opposition to (Donald)  Trump.” Now, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating how and why the arrest if Daniels happened, according to a Columbus Dispatch report.  Within a day of the arrest, as AVN.com reported, the lead detective in the arrest was revealed by his own social media posts to be a Trump supporter. Daniels was arrested supposedly for violating a local law prohibiting nude performers from any sort of physical contact with audience members. But it quickly became clear that Daniels did not violate the law, which applied only to “regular” performers in a specific venue, and the charges against her were dismissed. About two weeks later, a report on a local news website revealed internal emails between officers involved in the arrest that appeared to show that the arrest if Daniels was planned in advance by the Columbus vice cops, and that the officers’ stated explanation that the bust had been part of an ongoing “prostitution and human trafficking” investigation was merely a cover story. The allegations, along with another incident involving an police shooting of 23-year-old woman during a prostitution arrest, led earlier this month to the Columbus Police Department temporarily shutting down the 20-officer vice squad to conduct a “comprehensive review” of the unit’s activities.  On Thursday, Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs turned the investigation of the department’s vice unit over to the FBI, after the department’s internal investigation turned up what the Dispatch report simply described as “evidence” in the probe, which Jacobs had earlier described as aiming to uncover “bad cops” in the vice unit. In July, after the arrest of Daniels, the city’s police union denied that politics played a role in the bust. Daniels, of course, has made national headlines since March when she filed a lawsuit against Trump over a “hush” deal she signed just days before the 2016 presidential election to keep her quiet about a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump. Photo by Raymond Wambsgans / Wikimedia Commons