DOJ spent years withholding hush money files from Michael Cohen — before finally giving them to Trump
Originally, Donald Trump's trial in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.'s indictment was scheduled to begin on Monday, March 25. But when thousands of pages of evidence were newly released by federal U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigators for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), Bragg agreed to a delay based on discovery considerations.
Discovery is the process in which competing sides in a legal case are required to share evidence. Now, the trial is scheduled to begin in mid-April.
In an article published on March 22, the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery compares efforts by Trump and Michael Cohen — Trump's former personal attorney and fixer and a key witness in Bragg's case — to obtain federal documents in the investigation of hush money payments paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016. According to Pagliery, there is quite a contrast: While it took Cohen years trying to obtain 32 pages of documents, Trump and his legal team recently obtained 200,000 pages.
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It is because of all that newly obtained material that Bragg agreed to a trial delay.
"Legal scholars on the sidelines are asking why the feds unexpectedly presented a trove of new documents to the former president," Pagliery explains. "But an untold piece of this puzzle is that Michael Cohen, the one-time Trump confidant and fixer whom Bragg is relying on to prove that Trump broke the law, had been asking for many of these same records for more than two years — only to face stiff resistance from the Department of Justice."
The Daily Beast reporter adds, "Cohen, who feels that the feds unfairly prosecuted him for the hush money deal while never going after his former boss, teamed up with journalist Brian Karem to demand records from the FBI and DOJ."
According to Pagliery, Karem filed a Freedom of Information Act request in December 2021.
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"After not hearing back from the feds, Karem sued," Pagliery reports. "In court filings, the FBI in New York eventually 'identified over 450,000 pages of potentially responsive material' and promised to roll out 500 pages a month to Karem starting in August 2022. But it wasn't until March 11 this year that the FBI finally started turning over those records to Cohen, which are marked 'unclassified.' And when it did, the first batch was a measly 32 pages."
Pagliery continues, "By comparison, SDNY — that very same week — had just sent a whopping 73,193 documents about the same investigation in Trump's direction. The feds had fast-tracked a request by Trump's lead defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, who was looking for information that could undercut the Manhattan DA's case and undermine Cohen's credibility."
Cohen isn't happy with the way the DOJ has handled his and Karem's documents requests compared to Trump's.
The 2024 GOP presidential nominee's personal attorney and fixer told the Beast, "Trump put in a request for the documents in January, so that orange piece of s***, in 45 days, gets documents that I've been waiting on for years. I'm angry that he's able to delay this case."
Similarly, Karem, known for his work for Salon, told the Beast, "When Donald Trump says there's a two-tiered justice system, that stupid mo*********r is exactly right. Here's the problem: He's on the top tier, and the rest of us aren't…. I don't want to hear that you can't produce it for me. If Congress is going to tell us that they're for transparency, then make the government a little more transparent."
Jose Pagliery's full report for the Daily Beast is available at this link (subscription required)
