Michael Cohen has been under investigation for months now and he’s finally starting to cooperate with federal investigators. Cohen was Donald Trump’s personal attorney, making him the person to pay off mistresses, deal with sketchy business transactions for Trump, and oversee any deals or hush-hush happenings during the 2016 presidential election. Because of this, Cohen’s New York properties and law office were raided on April 9th and 3.7 million documents were seized, ABC News reports.
During this investigation Cohen had been represented by Stephen Ryan and Todd Harrison, but because of many issues — one source claiming one issue being a fee dispute — Ryan and Harrison will not be representing him any longer. In turn, Cohen has no representation and, according to ABC News, he is “likely to cooperate with the federal prosecutors in Manhattan.”
When Ryan was still Cohen’s lawyer, he argued that the contents of the 3.7 million documents contained attorney-client communications and Cohen asked the court if his attorneys could look through the documents for those communications before the prosecutors did. Judge Kimba Wood complied, appointing Judge Barbara Jones as referee and “special master” over the review of the documents.
In addition to Cohen and his attorneys, Trump and the Trump administration also were allowed to look over the materials for any “potentially privileged items.”
Judge Jones found 162 of the first 300,000 items reviewed to be covered by attorney-client privilege and rejected 3 items the Trump administration felt were privileged.
Judge Wood ruled the deadline for the review to be this Friday. After that, all items not covered by attorney-client privilege or found not privileged for the Trump admin, will go to court to be reviewed by federal investigators.
