Thread: Trump lawyer Michael Cohen under criminal investigation

Originally Posted by Judy

LOL!! That doesn't apply here to New York taxi-cabs.

Cohen's taxi companies owe New York state $85,752 in taxes, according to state warrants filed on six of Cohen's shell companies since 2017, according to CNN research.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Cohen's taxi companies owe New York state $85,752 in taxes, according to state warrants filed on six of Cohen's shell companies since 2017, according to CNN research.

Yes, those are state tax issues. Common as snot in the winter. DUH!!

Trump's attorney being investigated for BANK FRAUD, CAMPAIGN FINANCE VIOLATIONS

FBI eyes Cohen's real estate, taxi businesses

Yellow cabs and apartment houses: FBI is taking a broad look at Michael Cohen's business


Hunter Walker White House Correspondent
,Yahoo News•April 13, 2018

President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen enters a restaurant in Manhattan, April 10, 2018. (Photo: Amir Levy/Reuters) More

WASHINGTON — When FBI agents raided the office and residences of President Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen this week, they were looking for much more than evidence of hush-money payoffs to women the president might have slept with, sources familiar with the investigation say.

In the weeks leading up to the raid, prosecutors working with special counsel Robert Mueller asked pointed questions about Cohen’s personal real estate deals, his efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and his family’s taxi business, as well as payments to actress Stormy Daniels, a source who was among those questioned told Yahoo News.

Related Searches Michael Cohen FBIFBI Raids Michael Cohen OfficeMichael Cohen Office Raided

This interest from the special counsel preceded Monday’s FBI raids on Cohen’s office, his home and a Manhattan hotel where he had been staying. The New York Times reported that the raid stemmed partially from a referral from Mueller, and that it sought records related to Cohen’s cab business and the payments to the women. This new information about the questions Mueller’s team had about Cohen reveals that the FBI’s interest in Cohen’s personal finances and foreign business dealings goes even deeper.

Cohen has not responded to multiple requests from Yahoo News. His lawyer, Stephen Ryan, declined to comment on whether the FBI is looking into Cohen’s business history.

“I’m not taking calls in my office from the press.

Thanks,” Ryan said before hanging up.

Ryan did not respond to a subsequent email from Yahoo News.

The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York also declined to comment about any matter related to Cohen.

On Monday, the day of the FBI raid, the multinational law firm and lobbying powerhouse Squire Patton Boggs said it was ending what had been described as a “strategic alliance” with Cohen that was announced almost exactly one year ago.

According to the New York Law Journal, Cohen was a mysterious presence at the firm, with many of his colleagues unclear about his role and troubled by the murky arrangement even before FBI agents burst into his office.


FBI officials reportedly raided the offices of Michael Cohen at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, April 9, 2018. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images) More

In the wake of the FBI raid, many of Cohen’s other business associates refused to answer questions about their relationship with him.

This included the Republican National Committee, which gave Cohen a top fundraising position almost exactly one year ago.

On April 3, 2017, the RNC named Cohen a national deputy chairman of its Finance leadership team. The announcement cited the “more than a decade” that Cohen had spent as an executive at Trump’s real estate company. It also noted that Cohen “sat on the boards of multiple Trump organizations, including Trump Productions, the Eric Trump Foundation, and the Miss Universe Organization.” The RNC touted Cohen’s support for Trump’s political efforts, including “raising millions of dollars for his campaign” and serving as “an active spokesperson and advisor for the President during his interest in seeking office since 2011.” Patton Boggs noted Cohen’s role at the RNC when his relationship with the firm was announced.

Yahoo News called the RNC’s press office on Thursday to confirm whether Cohen is still a national deputy chairman of the party’s Finance leadership team. A woman who answered the phone said she believed Cohen still has a position with the party. She said we should email the communications team for a “proper statement” about his role.

Over the next several hours, the RNC did not respond to that email. Yahoo News subsequently called the RNC, seeking a response. The woman who answered the phone this second time said the earlier call had been answered by an “intern” and she would not confirm whether Cohen remains with the RNC.

The RNC also would not say whether the FBI had taken records related to his fundraising.

RNC finance chairman Todd Ricketts did not respond to multiple requests for comment about Cohen.

It may be hard for the party to cast Cohen aside, given his close relationship with the president.

The FBI’s raid on Cohen reportedly enraged Trump, who called it a “real disgrace” and accused Mueller of conducting a “total witch hunt” during an appearance at the White House on Monday. Trump’s response to the Cohen raid has led to mounting speculation that he could seek to fire Mueller.

Cohen’s personal real estate business, which has apparently attracted the attention of the FBI, may not be as high profile as Trump’s, but it’s not small either. Cohen has owned multiple New York City apartment buildings, including one he reportedly purchased in 2015 for $58 million. Cohen’s real estate investments led to his first public association with Trump.

According to an article in the New York Post, Cohen purchased an apartment at Trump World Tower in Manhattan in 2001. The Post noted that Cohen was “so impressed” with Trump’s building that he “convinced his parents, his in-laws and a business partner to buy there, too.”


Trump World Tower in New York City. (Photo: Jeffrey Greenberg/UIG via Getty Images) More

“Cohen’s in-laws went on purchase two more units there and one at Trump Grande in Sunny Isles, Fla.,” the Post article said.

In that newspaper story, which was published in 2007, Trump was quoted praising Cohen for buying in his buildings.

“Michael Cohen has a great insight into the real-estate market. … He has invested in my buildings because he likes to make money — and he does,” Trump said, adding, “In short, he’s a very smart person.”

Cohen became an executive at the Trump Organization that same year.
Public records show that Fima and Ania Shusterman, the parents of Cohen’s wife, Laura, have lived at Trump World Tower. The Shustermans are Ukrainian. Cohen’s brother, Bryan, also married a Ukrainian woman. Bryan Cohen’s father-in-law, Alex Oronov, purchased an apartment at Trump Hollywood in Florida in 2010.

Cohen’s Ukrainian in-laws have had extensive business dealings with him, including his taxi operation.

According to an analysis from the Real Deal, a local real estate industry trade publication, Cohen owned at least 34 taxi medallions in New York City as of 2017. That’s a multimillion-dollar operation. Medallions are a license to operate a yellow cab in the city and, in the past, have been worth as much as $1 million each. In more recent years, the yellow cab business has suffered due to the rise of ride-sharing apps like Uber, and the medallions have sold for under $200,000.

The Huffington Post documented how Cohen inherited part of his taxi business from the Shustermans. According to the news site Talking Points Memo, which has extensively chronicled Cohen’s business dealings and ties to Eastern Europe, the medallions were subsequently managed by a Ukrainian cab entrepreneur named Simon Garber, who had been a client of Cohen’s and has a lengthy police record. Talking Points Memo reported that the Cohen family’s partnership with Garber fell apart amid a legal dispute in 2012. Yahoo News called Garber on Thursday to ask about his dealings with Cohen, and he was decidedly not forthcoming.


Michael Cohen arrives at his hotel in New York, April 11, 2018. (Photo: Seth Wenig/AP) More

“Who’s Michael Cohen?” he asked before hanging up the phone.

The family’s medallions were then managed by Russian-born Evgeny Freidman, who is known as the “taxi king” for his New York City cab empire. Reached on the phone Wednesday, Freidman, who has had a litany of legal issues, also hung up without discussing his relationship with Cohen.

“I’m not interested,” Freidman said.

In a previous conversation with Talking Points Memo, Freidman said that he and Cohen are both friends and partners.

“I help him out as much as I can. I also have a business relationship, but we’re friends, you know. We have dinner with his wife,” Freidman said.

Yahoo News briefly spoke to Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, on Wednesday.

Shusterman would not discuss the family’s taxi ventures.

“I am not in taxi business long time,” Shusterman said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

On Wednesday, the New York Daily News reported that the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has said Cohen and his wife owe more than $55,000 in unpaid taxes connected to their taxi business. The oldest tax warrants are from 2013, and the total amount of alleged debt has grown by more than $15,000 since last August. Back then, Talking Points Memo asked about the debt, and Cohen suggested it was connected to Freidman’s tax issues. Freidman was arrested in 2017 and charged with failing to pay millions to the state.

The taxi operation isn’t the only time Cohen entered into business with his Ukrainian in-laws. In 2006, Oronov, Bryan Cohen’s father-in-law, teamed up with the two brothers on multiple companies involved in the Ukrainian ethanol industry. Those ventures were also detailed by Talking Points Memo and BuzzFeed. Bryan Cohen did not respond to a request for comment on this story. Oronov passed away in March 2017.

After Cohen began working for the Trump Organization in 2007, he became the future president’s self-described fiercely loyal fixer.

“If somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit,” Cohen said in a 2011 interview with ABC News.

Cohen was one of Trump’s earliest political advisers who counseled the future president when he had just a handful of aides working on a campaign that wasn’t taken seriously by the Washington establishment. Cohen never officially joined Trump’s campaign, but he led an outside organization aimed at helping Trump win over minority voters. Cohen also regularly made television appearances on Trump’s behalf, including a famous interview where he questioned poll numbers.


Michael Cohen, personal lawyer for then-President-elect Trump, gets into an elevator at Trump Tower, Dec. 12, 2016, in New York City. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images) More

It’s Cohen’s work behind the scenes of the campaign that has attracted the FBI’s interest — trying to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and paying a porn star who claimed Trump had an affair with her.

Cohen has confirmed that he reached out to the Kremlin as the Trump Organization pursued the Moscow project from September 2015 until January 2016, which was during Trump’s presidential bid. In a statement to CNN, Cohen described the Trump Moscow proposal as “one of many development opportunities that the Trump Organization considered and ultimately rejected.” Though the project didn’t come to fruition, it’s an obvious area of interest to Mueller’s probe, which is focused on the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election. The U.S. intelligence community has said that this Russian interference was aimed at helping Trump win the race.

Trump Moscow was reportedly the brainchild of Felix Sater, a Russian developer who had office space in Trump’s Manhattan headquarters and had a deal to build Trump-branded properties. In a May 2016 interview with Yahoo News, Trump suggested that he barely knew Sater.

“He was a guy who would bring deals up here, but we did very few of them. … Who was that? Sa-ter? Sater, yeah, we did very few of the deals,” Trump said. “He was somebody that he worked for a company, he worked for a company and he would bring deals to us, but we did very few of the deals.”

Yahoo News reached out to Sater on Wednesday to ask about his relationship with Cohen. Sater said he would only answer questions in writing because the media has focused on his conviction in a stock fraud scheme rather than his extensive work as a U.S. intelligence asset who provided the government with valuable information about terrorists and mobsters. In an email to Yahoo News, Sater said that he and Cohen “first met as teenagers.”

The $130,000 payment to the porn star, Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, was made by Cohen in October 2016, just weeks before the presidential election. The payment was part of a confidentiality agreement that prevented Daniels from discussing an affair she claims to have had with Trump in 2006. After the Wall Street Journal revealed the payment in January, a watchdog group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that the transaction constituted an undeclared campaign contribution to Trump, which would be a violation of campaign finance laws. In statements to the media and the commission, Cohen said the money had come from his own pocket. He described the payment as “a private transaction” that was “not a campaign contribution.”

In February, Cohen told Yahoo News that he had paid Daniels even though her claim about the affair with Trump was false.

“Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean that it can’t cause you harm or damage,” Cohen said. “I will always protect Mr. Trump.”

Trump has denied being aware of the payment and referred questions about it to Cohen.


Stormy Daniels, aka Stephanie Clifford, is interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CBS News’ 60 Minutes in early March 2018. (Photo: CBSNews/60 Minutes/Handout via Reuters) More

Daniels has filed a suit against Cohen and Trump arguing that the nondisclosure agreement she signed in conjunction with the payment is invalid because it was not signed by Trump. She has also separately filed a defamation suit against Cohen arguing that his denial of the affair falsely painted her as a liar.

Former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal has also claimed that she had an affair with Trump in 2006. American Media, Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, signed a six-figure contract with McDougal that she has described as an effort to bury her story. Cohen and Trump are close with AMI chairman and CEO David Pecker, and the special counsel’s prosecutors have probed whether Cohen also was involved in McDougal’s tabloid deal.

Questions about Cohen’s family and his dealings with the Kremlin first burst into the spotlight in January 2017, when BuzzFeed published an unconfirmed dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who was paid by Democrats and Republicans to conduct opposition research on Trump during the 2016 election. The dossier, which contained some errors, said that Cohen played an instrumental role in an ongoing exchange of information between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. Among other things, the document alleged that Cohen met with “Kremlin representatives” in Prague in August 2016. The dossier described Cohen’s wife as being “of Russian descent” and suggested that his father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, was a “a leading property developer in Moscow.”

Cohen strongly denied the various allegations in the dossier in a January 2017 interview with Yahoo News, where he noted that his wife is Ukrainian rather than Russian.

“I have no Russian Kremlin connections. My father-in-law is not a real estate developer friend of Putin’s in Russia. I don’t even think my father-in-law ever has been to Russia,” Cohen said of Shusterman.

Shusterman would not discuss the allegations in the dossier when Yahoo News called him on Wednesday.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Goodbye,” Shusterman said before hanging up.

Cohen brought up another one of his Ukrainian relatives, his brother’s father-in-law, Alex Oronov, in the interview where he denied the accusations in the dossier. As he claimed that he had never traveled to Russia, Cohen suggested his only visits to the region were two trips to Ukraine in “either 2003 or 2004,” because his “brother’s father-in-law lives in Kiev.” That was around the time the Cohen brothers were involved in the ethanol businesses with Oronov.

“I went to Kiev. That’s the extent of it. I’ve never been to Russia,” Cohen said.

Donald Trump, Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater attend the Trump SoHo Launch Party on Sept. 19, 2007, in New York. (Photo: Mark Von Holden/WireImage) More

On Jan. 19, 2017, the day before Trump took office, Cohen announced that he would be resigning from the Trump Organization and would become the president’s personal attorney.

“I’m not a government official. I’m not taking a government salary,” Cohen said. “I’m just going to continue technically in the role that I play for Mr. Trump as president of the Trump Organization. I’m just going to be doing it as Donald Trump as president of the United States.”

In his new role, Cohen was involved in another bit of intrigue with links to Sater and Oronov.

In February 2017, the New York Times reported that Cohen delivered Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn a peace plan for Ukraine and Russia that would have enabled the president to lift sanctions on Moscow. The proposal was crafted by Andrii Artemenko, a Ukrainian politician who met with Sater and Cohen shortly after Trump took office.

In a March 2017 Facebook post, Artemenko said that Oronov, Cohen’s brother’s father-in-law, introduced him to Cohen. Cohen disputed Artemenko’s claim and said that Sater had arranged the meeting about the peace plan. In his email to Yahoo News, Sater backed up Cohen’s version of events.

“Artemenko approached me,” Sater wrote of the peace plan. “I gave it to Michael to pass to the administration. I had been dealing with him on the Trump Moscow deal and just naturally followed up with him.”

Flynn resigned as Trump’s national security adviser amid a scandal over his own dealings with Russian officials days after Cohen delivered him the peace plan. Sater said that he and Cohen did not present the proposal to anyone else in the White House after Flynn’s departure.

Yahoo News also asked Sater if the FBI has questioned him about Cohen or requested any documents related to the president’s personal attorney.

“No comment,” Sater wrote.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/yellow-ca...152635688.html

White House spokeswoman throws Michael Cohen under the taxi

David Knowles
,Yahoo News•April 13, 2018

Trump attorney Michael Cohen. (Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP) More

Michael who?

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders distanced President Trump from attorney Michael Cohen at Friday’s briefing, hours after court filings confirmed that Cohen is under criminal investigation in the Southern District of New York.

When asked whether Trump continues to have confidence in Cohen, Sanders responded, “I know that the president has worked with him as a personal attorney. Beyond that, I don’t have anything else.”

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that, in addition to arranging a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, Cohn helped facilitate a $1.6 million payment to a former Playboy model on behalf of Trump confidant Elliott Broidy, a deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Sanders was asked whether Trump still held Cohen in confidence. “I would refer you to Mr. Cohen’s personal attorney,” she replied.

In a follow up question, another reporter asked whether Cohen was still the president’s personal attorney.

“I’m not sure, Jill,” Sanders, who came to the briefing armed with pre-written statements that anticipated questions about former FBI director James Comey’s new memoir, said. “I’d have to check.”

Cohen has been a focal point for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian government. That inquiry spurred a raid on Cohen’s offices and New York hotel room, the seizure of his files and computers as part of a separate FBI investigation into Cohen’s business dealings.

Although usually identified as Trump’s attorney, Cohen also has extensive holdings in real estate and the taxi business, which are believed to be part of the investigation. On Friday, Cohen asked a Manhattan judge to block the review of the documents seized by the FBI, arguing that some of them may be protected by attorney-client privilege.

Cohen has made a point of proclaiming his loyalty to Trump in public. While Sanders’s chilly comments suggested the White House was putting some distance between them, the New York Times reported Friday that Trump called Cohen privately to “check in.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/white-hou...204026300.html

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Documenting the Witch Hunt. That's great!!

Trump's lawyer to plead the Fifth
​

BREAKING NEWS
Court papers: Michael Cohen will assert his right against self-incrimination in the Stormy Daniels hush money case

Good! He should take the Fifth, that's why it's in our Constitution.

Trump admits Michael Cohen was his lawyer in Stormy Daniels matter

‘Michael represents me, like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal’

• President contradicts previous assertion in Fox & Friends interview

Lauren Gambino in Washington
Thu 26 Apr 2018 12.49 EDT First published on Thu 26 Apr 2018 9.27

The president told reporters earlier this month he did not know about the $130,000 payment Cohen made to Stormy Daniels.

Donald Trump has acknowledged for the first time that his lawyer Michael Cohen represented him in the “crazy Stormy Daniels deal” – despite having previously denied knowing about a $130,000 hush payment arranged by Cohen to silence the adult film star, who claims to have had sex with him more than a decade ago.

“He represents me, like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, he represented me,” Trump said in a half-hour interview with the morning TV show Fox & Friends. “From what I’ve seen, he did absolutely nothing wrong. There were no campaign funds going into this, which would have been a problem.”

Within hours, the admission prompted a fresh court filing from federal prosecutors in New York investigating Cohen’s business dealings, arguing that the president’s comment undermines Cohen’s claim that records seized by the FBI in that case should be protected by attorney-client privilege.

The admission and filing came ahead of the latest court hearing in Cohen’s criminal case in New York on Thursday afternoon. The events represented the latest twist in the drama that has been playing out since Daniels sued Trump in March in Los Angeles, alleging that Cohen paid to silence her during the election campaign, and then the FBI raided Cohen in April.

On Wednesday, Cohen said he plans to plead the fifth amendment in the civil case and asked the LA court for a delay while the parallel case plays out in New York.

Earlier this month, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he did not know about the payoff or where Cohen had got the money. When asked why Cohen made the payment, Trump said: “You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. You’ll have to ask Michael.”

But during the interview with Fox & Friends on Thursday morning, Trump appeared to reveal that he was aware of Cohen’s payment to Daniels.

Cohen reportedly paid Daniels the money to keep her quiet about claims she had an affair with Trump. Daniels has sued to release herself from a non-disclosure agreement that she signed in 2016, arguing that it was void because Trump never signed it.

Trump, meanwhile, on Thursday sought to distance himself from Cohen, his lawyer and fixer for over a decade.

“Michael is in business, he is really a businessman, a fairly big business, as I understand it,” Trump said. “I don’t know his business, but [the investigation] doesn’t have to do with me.”

He added that Cohen “also practices law” but handled only a “tiny, tiny little fraction” of Trump’s “overall legal work”.

The hush-money payment to Daniels is reportedly a focus of a federal investigation into Cohen’s private finances and business interests. Investigators are likely to examine whether the payment was legal under election campaign finance laws and whether Cohen disclosed the true reason for borrowing the funds.

Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for Stormy Daniels, called Trump’s comments a “hugely damaging admission” and said they help to burnish her case.

“He now has backtracked and now admits that Michael Cohen represented him in connection with the Stormy Daniels matter and that directly contradicts what he said,” Avenatti said on MSNBC.

Following Trump’s interview, federal prosecutors hit back afresh against claims by Cohen that records seized by the FBI should be off-limits. Fox News host Sean Hannity, who was also revealed in court as one of Cohen’s clients, has made a similar argument.

“These statements by two of Cohen’s three identified clients suggest that the seized materials are unlikely to contain voluminous privileged documents, further supporting the importance of efficiency here,” Robert Khuzami, the deputy US attorney for the southern district of New York, wrote in a letter filed on Thursday.

Lawyers for Trump and Cohen have sought to restrict what prosecutors are able to review based on a claim of attorney-client privilege.

In the same, wide-ranging interview with Fox on Thursday, Trump turned once again to the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into whether his campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 presidential election, and took contrary views in quick succession.

“Because of the fact that they have this witch-hunt going on … I‘ve taken the position – and I don’t have to take this position, and maybe I’ll change – that I will not be involved with the justice department,” he said, then later added: “Our justice department, which I try and stay away from but at some point I won’t” should not be focused on the “nonsense of collusion with Russia”.

Trump also wished his wife, Melania, a happy birthday and said he chose the interview datein honor of the occasion. Asked what he got her, Trump said he had better not say because “maybe I didn’t get her so much”, adding: “I got her a beautiful card. You know I’m very busy.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...stormy-daniels

Trump Acknowledges Michael Cohen Represented Him In Stormy Daniels Payment

April 26, 20189:14 AM ET Philip Ewing



President Trump acknowledged on Thursday that attorney Michael Cohen had represented him in the deal Cohen concluded with porn actress Stormy Daniels. Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images

Updated at 2:18 a.m. ET

President Trump acknowledged on Thursday that his longtime attorney Michael Cohen had "represented" him in what he called the "crazy" deal in which Cohen paid $130,000 to buy the silence of a porn actress just before the 2016 election.

Trump's comments in an interview with Fox & Friends were the first time he has conceded his connection to Cohen's deal with Stormy Daniels, who says she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, after Trump's marriage and the birth of his youngest son.
Previously, Trump denied any relationship with Daniels and told reporters he wasn't aware that Cohen paid Daniels.



For his part, Cohen has acknowledged paying Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford. Daniels says that Cohen was acting on behalf of Trump to keep her quiet to avoid a scandal and that he had her sign an agreement not to talk about her relationship with Trump.
Daniels is suing to escape that contract; Cohen says he will invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself and will not testify as part of that lawsuit.

Trump's interview complicates legal matters for Cohen, who is dealing with a criminal investigation into his business practices in federal court in New York City. Cohen and lawyers for Trump asked a judge to restrict how much evidence prosecutors can review from an earlier FBI raid of Cohen's home and office, citing the importance of attorney-client privilege.

But Trump on Thursday downplayed his relationship with Cohen, saying the attorney barely represented him. Cohen, Trump said, is mostly a businessman and federal investigators are looking at that aspect of his life, not his legal work that might be connected to Trump.

Cohen has worked for Trump for years and served as not only a counselor but also as a gatekeeper for outsiders and, in Cohen's words, a "pit bull" when necessary.

The special master

The president's comments on Thursday undercut Cohen's case about privileged communications in the evidence seized by the FBI. That was the reason Cohen's legal team gave for asking a federal judge to appoint a "special master" to review the material — rather than permitting a Justice Department "filter team" to go through it.

Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York wrote to federal Judge Kimba Wood on Thursday that they were prepared to withdraw their objection to a "special master."

One reason, they wrote, was that it has become clear how few legal clients Cohen has. Prosecutors cited the comments by Trump on TV on Thursday and earlier statements by another putative client, Fox News host Sean Hannity, minimizing their relationships with Cohen.
That must mean there isn't much protected material, as the U.S. Attorney's Office wrote, and Wood can authorize the lawyers involved to work efficiently.

"These statements by two of Cohen's three identified clients suggest that the seized materials are unlikely to contain voluminous privileged documents, further supporting the importance of efficiency here," they wrote to the judge.

Ultimately, Wood said on Thursday she had decided to appoint attorney Barbara Jones, a former judge in the Southern District, to serve as a special master in the Cohen case.

Wood said in court that Jones would would be available to meet with attorneys next week and that Wood planned to check in on her progress every week.

Jones was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1995 by President Clinton. She served on the bench there for 16 years before retiring and joining the lawfirm Bracewell.

In 2014, Jones acted as the arbitrator in the NFL's dispute with former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, overturning the league's indefinite suspension of Rice.

Harry Sandick, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, told NPR he thought Jones is a "great pick for special master."

"She was an outstanding judge, and it's not hard to see why Judge Wood decided to pick her for this very important position," said Sandick, who prosecuted several cases over which Jones presided. "She's known in the legal community in New York as someone who cares about getting it right, above all."

https://www.npr.org/2018/04/26/60598...aniels-payment