On Friday, US District Judge Kimba Wood adopted the recommendations on what is and isn’t privileged among Michael Cohen’s documents seized by the government in raids on his offices in April. There has been speculation, mainly at the suggestion of Donald Trump, that much of the material was covered by attorney-client privilege. It turns out, almost none of it involved communications between Cohen and his clients, including Donald Trump and therefore, almost none of the documents fall under those protections.
Trump sparked the question after he fumed online, suggesting attorney-client privilege had been violated.
Attorney–client privilege is dead!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 10, 2018
After the raid on his offices, Cohen and his team of lawyers argued for the appointment of a special master which would, allow them, Trump’s attorneys, and the Trump Organization to identify documents protected by attorney-client privilege that could not be used in a potential prosecution. They were successful and a retired federal judge, Barbara Jones, was appointed as the special master to review and determine which documents are privileged. She determined that just 162 were privileged from the 300,000 documents already reviewed. She later amended her ruling to place one of those 162 documents under further consideration.
Just another example of Trump trying to sway the collective thought using his own rhetoric. Let’s hope we get to see what happens when his ‘unprivileged’ words are used in a potential prosecution.
