Federal investigators in New York City have started poring through the files seized from Michael Cohen, President Trump's personal lawyer, more than a month after FBI agents exercised a search warrant on Cohen's office, residences, and bank deposit box on April 9. At the request of Cohen's legal team, U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood allowed Cohen and a neutral arbiter called a special master to go through the documents first to flag files covered by attorney-client privilege with Cohen's three law clients: Trump, Sean Hannity, and GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy. If the documents are deemed privileged, prosecutors won't be able to see them.
The first batch of documents processed by the special master, Barbara Jones, and Cohen's team included Cohen's paper documents, and Jones said last week that she will give Wood a timeline for processing the much larger collection of electronic files once she gets enough of that material; the government is expected to hand over all electronic files except from one computer by Friday. The office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York is investigating Cohen for possible business fraud, and prosecutors have suggested that little of Cohen's relevant documents will be covered by attorney-client privilege.
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