Judge Orders Document Review in Cohen Case to End Next Week

The federal judge overseeing the investigation of Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer, said on Tuesday that a painstaking review of a trove of documents and data files seized from Cohen in April must be finished by next week.

For nearly two months, lawyers for Cohen, Trump and Trump’s private business, the Trump Organization, have been working with a court-appointed arbiter to determine how much of the seized materials are protected by attorney-client privilege. The review is important because it will shape the contours of the evidence that prosecutors can use as they investigate Cohen’s business dealings, including hush-money payments he made to women who say they had affairs with Trump.

Over the weekend, lawyers for the Trump Organization asked Judge Kimba M. Wood of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, to give them until July 11 to finish the review, saying they had just received some new materials, among them “a number of audio files.” Other lawyers in the case have said Cohen often recorded his business conversations, but the Trump Organization’s mention of the audio files was the clearest sign yet that Cohen did in fact make recordings.

Wood was already concerned that the process of sorting through the nearly 4 million files seized from Cohen was moving too slowly, and in an order issued Tuesday, she denied the Trump Organization’s request for 2 1/2 more weeks, instead setting a deadline of 11:59 a.m. July 5. Any files that the Cohen and Trump legal camps had not deemed to be privileged by the deadline, she said, would be turned over to a special group of prosecutors separate from the investigation. That group, known as a taint team, would then do their own review of the remaining materials to determine which were privileged.

So far, the arbiter, a special master, has found only 161 items in the seized files that fall under the attorney-client privilege rule, meaning the government cannot look at them. The rule is designed to keep communications between a lawyer and a client secret so they can have frank conversations without fear that the statements will be used against them.

Last week, Wood said most of the privileged files were communications between Cohen and his own lawyers. Wood did not describe any of the files in detail, but she said that seven of the privileged items were emails between Cohen and “a client, containing legal advice made in anticipation of litigation.” One of them, she added, was an email in which Cohen received “a request to initiate legal representation.”

The review of the files began after federal agents armed with search warrants raided Cohen’s office, apartment and hotel room on April 9, hauling off eight boxes of documents, about 30 cellphones, iPads and computers, and even the contents of one of his shredders. Though the review has delayed the investigation, it has not stopped it entirely.

On Monday, Stephanie Clifford, a pornographic film star better known as Stormy Daniels, was scheduled to be interviewed by the prosecutors about a $130,000 payment that Cohen made to her in the days before the 2016 election to keep her quiet about an affair she claimed she had with Trump. But according to Clifford’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, the prosecutors canceled the interview at the last minute after “the press” had “caught wind of it.”