A US prosecutor on Friday attacked a claim by President Donald Trump\u2019s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen that many of the materials seized this week in FBI raids on Cohen\u2019s office and home as part of a criminal investigation should remain private.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors also confirmed in a court filing on Friday that they have been investigating Cohen for months, largely over his business dealings rather than his legal work.<\/p>\n
Uncertainty over exactly what FBI agents seized from Cohen comes as Trump faces an intensifying probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into whether his presidential campaign colluded with Russia. The raids were partly a referral by Mueller\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
US District Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan ordered Cohen to appear in court on Monday afternoon, after holding three hearings on Friday into his request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking prosecutors from reviewing seized materials.<\/p>\n
Assistant US Attorney Tom McKay accused Cohen of trying to invoking \u201cwildly overbroad\u201d claims of attorney-client privilege to avoid the disclosure of thousands of allegedly privileged communications related to the president and other cases.<\/p>\n
These could include claims by Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.<\/p>\n
Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, wants to be freed from a nondisclosure agreement under which she was paid $130,000 shortly before the 2016 presidential election to keep quiet about that encounter.<\/p>\n
Cohen wants Wood to let them or a \u201cspecial master\u201d review the seized materials to decide what can be turned over, without violating the right of his clients to shield communications with their lawyers. \u201cWe\u2019re pretty confident there are thousands of privileged communications,\u201d Cohen\u2019s lawyer Todd Harrison told the judge.<\/p>\n
But \u201cthe attorney-client privilege can\u2019t at the same time be used as a sword and as a shield,\u201d McKay told Wood. \u201cWhat they are trying to do is use attorney-client privilege as a sword to challenge the government\u2019s ability to review evidence\u201d obtained lawfully, McKay added.<\/p>\n
He called Cohen\u2019s failure to provide \u201cbasic facts\u201d about what might be privileged was \u201cfatal\u201d to his request for a TRO.<\/p>\n
Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for Daniels, suggested at one of the hearings that his client might be the subject of some of the seized materials, and her interests needed protection as well.<\/p>\n
The judge also heard from a new lawyer for Trump, Joanna Hendon, who said the president had \u201can acute interest\u201d in the case. Hendon, who said Trump hired her on Wednesday evening, urged Wood not to decide who gets first shot to review seized documents until after she files a brief by Sunday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not trying to delay anything but nor do I see a particular rush,\u201d Hendon said.<\/p>\n
In Friday\u2019s filing, prosecutors said it would be \u201cunprecedented\u201d to allow Cohen\u2019s lawyers to decide what it is privileged, and that the government should be allowed to use its own \u201ctaint team,\u201d or \u201cfilter team,\u201d to do the job. They also downplayed the scope of potential privilege, saying they had before Monday secretly searched multiple email accounts belonging to Cohen, and which they said indicated that Cohen \u201cis in fact performing little to no legal work.\u201d<\/p>\n
The raids infuriated Trump, who tweeted \u201cAttorney-client privilege is dead!\u201d on Tuesday. McKay said Trump\u2019s ability to invoke the privilege is \u201cno different\u201d from anyone else\u2019s.<\/p>\n
FBI agents who conducted the raids were seeking information on payments to Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also claims to have had a sexual relationship with Trump, a person familiar with the matter has said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A US prosecutor on Friday attacked a claim by President Donald Trump\u2019s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen that many of the materials seized this week in FBI raids on Cohen\u2019s office and home as part of a criminal investigation should remain private. Prosecutors also confirmed in a court filing on Friday that they have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28057,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28058,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28056\/revisions\/28058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}