Cohen Lawyers, Judge, Spar Over Attorney-Client Privilege
By Allegra Kirkland | April 13, 2018 3:36 pm
NEW YORK — Lawyers for Michael Cohen were grilled by a U.S. District Judge Friday over their arguments that much of the information seized from Donald Trump’s longtime fixer by federal agents earlier this week is protected by attorney-client privilege.
Todd Harrison, a lawyer for Cohen, told Judge Kimba Wood that he had not had time to compile a full list of Cohen’s clients, and could not comply with a request to reveal their names to the court because of “ethical obligations” to protect their identities. Both the judge and federal prosecutors pressed them to turn over the information, arguing that it should be relatively simple to tally up Cohen’s client list and that the names of a lawyer’s clients are not privileged information.
“Your inability to answer suggests Mr. Cohen should be with you in court next time,” Judge Wood tartly suggested at one point.
Cohen was represented by a trio of attorneys — one who had only joined the case on Friday afternoon. They were there to argue that they should get to review the documents seized from Cohen’s office, apartment and hotel room this week before federal prosecutors look at them. According to reports, the search warrants related to payouts Cohen coordinated for women who have claimed to have had affairs with Trump, as well as to a taxi business Cohen is involved with.
In the courtroom Friday afternoon, the prosecution argued that Cohen’s team is trying to use attorney-client privilege to both keep the government from reviewing the information they have searched and to protect their client from having to turn over additional information pertinent to the case.
Assistant US Attorney Tom McKay said the law was very clear that the privilege “can’t be used as both a sword and a shield.”
The judge and Cohen’s team also went back and forth over how much of the seized evidence was privileged. Wood pressed Harrison on how they’d reached the conclusion that “thousands” of the documents were subject to that designation, and Harrison, after a tense exchange, was unable to provide a straight answer.
He called it an “estimate” and said he didn’t “know the exact number,” allowing that it could be under 1,000.
Wood ordered Harrison to take a recess to confer with Cohen and have the approximate number of privileged documents and all the client names prepared by the time the court reconvened at 4 pm.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/cohen-lawyers-judge-spar-over-attorney-client-privilege
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