Trump Lawyer’s Document Review Could Slow Pace of Prosecutors

• April 18 2018
• David Voreacos, Bob Van Voris

Prosecutors sitting on a trove of material seized from President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer fear they won’t get to look at it anytime soon.

Prosecutors sitting on a trove of material seized from President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer fear they won’t get to look at it anytime soon.

A week after the FBI raided attorney Michael Cohen’s home and office, a federal judge in New York must now make a crucial decision that could determine whether a U.S. probe of his business and financial dealings will continue at its same brisk pace.

The seized documents may include privileged attorney communications that the government shouldn’t be allowed to review, Cohen argues. Prosecutors counter that Cohen did little legal work and say they can be trusted not to look at confidential communications. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan is weighing how to proceed.

“This could take a really, really long time,” said Randy Zelin, a New York defense lawyer who’s not involved in the case.

Cohen helped resolve embarrassing episodes in Trump’s private life that threatened his candidacy in 2016. They include a $130,000 payment Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had sex with Trump in 2006, and another payment made to a Playboy playmate.

Cohen also worked to arrange a $1.6 million payment by Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy to a former Playboy Playmate after she became pregnant during an affair. He says his other client in the past year was Fox News host Sean Hannity.

10 Boxes

At a court hearing Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas McKay said FBI agents seized about 10 boxes of documents and made images of computer hard drives. Agents may have taken documents that Cohen kept from the decade he spent as Trump’s personal lawyer at the Trump Organization, according to Cohen attorney Todd Harrison.

Wood wants to make certain that prosecutors don’t review documents protected by the attorney-client privilege, which safeguards confidential communications between lawyers and clients, while allowing them to press their investigation swiftly. So far, she hasn’t embraced the government’s proposal -- allowing U.S. lawyers not involved in the probe to decide what’s privileged -- after it was assailed as unfair by attorneys for Trump and Cohen.

Trump Loses Initial Bid to Review Seized Records From Cohen

Cohen seeks an independent lawyer appointed by the judge to have the first crack at the documents. That, too, has its flaws. As Wood noted, a review of just three boxes of records by a so-called special master took more than a year after the seizure of records from Lynn Stewart, a lawyer who was later convicted of passing messages from a jailed terrorist.

“Where Mr. Cohen is now, clearly, obviously, under a criminal investigation, he is going to have even more incentive to try to slow down our investigation by dragging things out with claims of privilege,” McKay said at the hearing.

Document review can be slow. The more records seized, the longer it takes to weed out privileged material, Zelin noted. And if one side disagrees with a special master’s conclusions, the dispute could end up before a judge.

Trump is “apoplectic” that prosecutors have records of everything he told Cohen and all that Cohen did for him, CNN reported Tuesday. His lawyer, Joanna Hendon, says defense lawyers should be allowed to make a list of all potentially privileged materials and litigate them one by one. But doing that, McKay warned, will only drag matters out, as Trump reviews the records.

‘Busy Man’

“He’s a busy man,” McKay said. “It’s going to be very difficult for her to get the president of the United States’ time to consult about a privilege log with 100 items on it.”

Wood asked the parties to suggest four candidates each to serve as special master. The judge gave them until Wednesday to submit their list.

The process is moving forward. Wood this week directed prosecutors to load the documents they have on computer servers so that lawyers for Cohen can review them. Cohen will then go over them and make available to Trump those that relate to the president.