'Particularly suspect': How Trump’s lawyers went around judge to get dirt on Michael Cohen

16 March 2024

Former President Donald Trump's legal team in New York managed to push back Trump's first criminal trial back to April. That effort — the result of a massive document dump from the DOJ — came about despite restrictions the judge already put in place.

On Friday, Judge Juan Merchan granted a 30-day postponement of trial proceedings in Manhattan in order for Trump to have enough opportunity to review more than 100,000 documents the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) released. That document dump includes phone data, emails and bank records from Trump's former lawyer and "fixer," Michael Cohen, which Trump's team waited until January to officially request. The defense is likely reviewing the documents to find ways to discredit Cohen during the trial, as he is considered Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's star witness in the case.

According to recent Daily Beast report, Trump's lawyers were able to get the documents from the DOJ in spite of a December order from Merchan that rejected the request, calling it "an unrestrained foray into confidential records" to "impeach witnesses." In particular, Merchan regarded the effort to get the Cohen documents an "invasion" that could "not be justified."

But the Beast reported that SDNY came up with a compromise: While Trump would get some of the records he requested, anything to be released to defense lawyers would be first reviewed by Bragg's office. Damian Williams, who is the US Attorney for SDNY, also had discretion in what Trump's team would have access to, and notably declined to release certain Cohen materials.

Williams didn't acquiesce to Trump's efforts to obtain Cohen's tax filings between 2012 and 2016, calling them "less relevant or material than the subpoena requests quashed by Judge Merchan." Those tax filings include millions of dollars that Cohen didn't disclose to the IRS, which led to his eventual conviction for federal tax evasion. In 2018, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in facilitating hush money payments to women who said they had affairs with Trump prior to the 2016 election. Trump is currently being prosecuted for allegedly falsifying business records related to that scheme, making Cohen's testimony potentially damning for the former president.

But Williams' office did release all the data from Cohen's two iPhones to Trump's team, saying that "it would be unreasonably burdensome for this office to review the seized materials to identify potentially relevant material." Defense lawyers said they wanted the phones to find out more about Cohen’s “fraudulent schemes” and his “potential bias and motive." It's likely some of Cohen's communications from those phones will be brought up on cross-examination, as well as prosecutors' alleged reticence to release them.

"The people’s conduct relating to data from Cohen’s phones is particularly suspect," Trump lawyer Todd Blanche wrote in a March 8 filing.

The Beast reported that Trump's lawyers especially want to get their hands on the draft manuscript for a memoir Cohen in 2018 wrote about his time as Trump's personal lawyer — when he was still friendly with the ex-president. When the book was being pitched to publishers, the Beast reviewed Cohen's proposal, describing himself as the "family fix-it guy" who "saw it all, handled it all. And still do." In a Friday letter to Judge Merchan, the ex-president's legal team defended their efforts to obtain the documents despite resistance from Bragg's office.

"The USAO-SDNY produced this large volume of records voluntarily, in response to a straightforward request by President Trump that the office exercise its discretion under federal regulations in a manner that promotes the interests of justice and the truth-seeking function at the criminal trial in this case," Trump's lawyers wrote.

The Manhattan trial is the first of four criminal trials on Trump's 2024 calendar, and despite the postponement, Trump may still be a convicted felon before election day. Bragg has indicted Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records, escalating the charges from misdemeanors to felonies under the argument that the hush money payments were illegal campaign expenditures.

Former Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz — who represented him during his first impeachment trial — predicted Bragg would secure a criminal conviction and that the ex-president's legal team should focus their efforts on the appeal more than the initial trial. He observed that "any first-year law student could win a prosecution against Donald Trump in Manhattan."

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