In a court filing that morning, Cohen’s lawyers said that Cohen had three clients between 2017 and 2018, but only named two: Trump, and former Republican National Committee official Elliott Broidy.
Broidy recently resigned from the GOP organization after news outlets revealed that Cohen negotiated a hush deal worth $1.6 million with an ex-Playboy model who said she was impregnated by Broidy.
The third client was anonymous. Lawyers for Cohen refused to identify Hannity, saying in the document that it was “likely to be embarrassing or detrimental to the client.”
But although Stephen Ryan, an attorney for Cohen, argued at length to keep Hannity’s name hidden, Judge Wood would not relent.
“The client is a publicly prominent individual,” Ryan said, before offering to give Hannity’s name to Wood in a sealed envelope. The suggestion drew an objection from another party in the courtroom, who said that except in limited cases, attorney-client privilege did not relate to the identities of clients.
Wood agreed, and said the client’s name “must be disclosed now.”
After some more argument, Ryan said, “The client’s name involved is Sean Hannity.”
The admission drew audible gasps from the audience.
.. The materials seized from Cohen in the raids comprise up to 10 boxes of printed documents and more than two dozen electronic devices, including cell phones.
The Cohen Searches and Trump’s De Mini-Mess
The Stormy Daniels scandal could be more perilous for Trump than the Russia investigation has been.
.. Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was caught hiding the sources of 1,300 large campaign donations, aggregating to nearly $2 million. The campaign also accepted more than $1.3 million in unlawful donations from contributors who had already given the legal maximum.
.. Under federal law, such campaign-finance violations, if they aggregate to just $25,000 in a calendar year, may be treated as felonies punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment — with offenses involving smaller dollar amounts punishable by incarceration for a year or more
.. Cohen’s law practice, which is the focus of the investigation involving the payment to Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie Clifford), is in the SDNY.
.. The SDNY is no longer run by Preet Bharara, whom Trump dismissed along with other Obama appointees after taking office. The acting U.S. attorney is Geoffrey Berman, a Trump appointee named by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to serve on an interim basis while awaiting confirmation.
.. ABC News reports that Berman is recused from the Cohen investigation
.. Cohen’s obvious relevance to Mueller’s investigation — he is accused in the Steele dossier of being a liaison between the Trump campaign and Russia (an apparently uncorroborated claim that Cohen convincingly denies); and he was on the receiving end of emails from Felix Sater, a Russian immigrant and Trump business associate, who boasted that his friend Vladimir Putin would help “get Donald elected.”
.. When one reads the guidelines, one suspects that there must be more to the SDNY’s investigation of Cohen than the Stormy Daniels transaction — a suspicion echoed in the aforementioned Times report, which describes the searches as “related to several topics, including a payment to a pornographic film actress” (emphasis added).
.. If the only matter under investigation were a potential campaign-finance violation that would normally not be grist for criminal prosecution, it would be outrageous to raid a lawyer’s office — especially the president’s lawyer.
Not only must high-level Justice Department approval be obtained before seeking a search warrant for an attorney’s premises; the prosecutors and their superiors must explore whether less intrusive investigative alternatives — such as seeking the desired materials by grand-jury subpoena — would be viable.
.. The issuance of search warrants necessarily means a federal judge found probable cause that evidence of at least one crime would be uncovered in Cohen’s premises. In addition to the potential campaign-finance offense, the feds are reportedly weighing bank-fraud charges — possibly on a theory that steps taken to hide the nature and purpose of the payment to Clifford entailed misrepresentations to a financial institution, although that is just speculation at this point.
.. The clean team determines what files are relevant to the matter under investigation, with any irrelevant files returned to the attorney.
.. the attorney and any affected clients are given an opportunity to claim that the files contain privileged communications and should be returned. Where the parties cannot agree, such privilege claims are decided by a judge.
.. the clean team ensures that the investigation team is not tainted by exposure to privileged communications.
.. As I explained last November, when we learned that Mueller had forced an attorney who had represented Manafort to testify against him, there is a so-called crime-fraud exception to the attorney–client privilege.
.. If a client’s communications with a lawyer are for the purpose of carrying out a fraudulent scheme, they lose any claim to confidentiality. Theoretically, then, Trump and Cohen have a legal as well as a factual problem. Legally, if they conspired to execute a payment in violation of campaign laws in order to silence Clifford, their communications in this regard would not be privileged.
Factually (if implausibly), both Cohen and Trump claim that the former did not tell the latter about the payment to Clifford; and that Cohen made the payment in his personal capacity, not as Trump’s lawyer. How, then, can they now claim attorney–client privilege in connection with the transaction?
.. the porn-star payment undeniably happened. I argued then, and I’m even more convinced now, that “the best argument in Trump’s favor is one that claims mitigation, not innocence.”
.. As for Trump’s fitness for the presidency, the scandal tells us exactly nothing that we didn’t already know about the flawed man that Americans chose to elect.
The Real Investigation
If there had been anything criminal to that storyline, the politicized anti-Trump factions in the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies would have leaked it.
.. the administration has taken enough aggressive steps against Russia that it is past time for the Kremlin to broadcast the big kompromat file if it exists.
.. But as long as a president’s actions — e.g., firing the FBI director, discussing the possibility of pardons — are on their face legal and within his legitimate constitutional authority, I do not believe they can validly predicate an obstruction prosecution.
.. I believe that the government is investigating whether there was, in connection with Trump’s White House bid, a conspiracy to commit fraud and extortion for the purpose of silencing potentially compromising sources — specifically, people in a position to portray Donald Trump as a womanizer.
.. Clearly, the prosecutors regard Trump and Cohen as potential co-conspirators. That does not mean a conspiracy will be proven, but the possibility is certainly being scrutinized.
.. Various reports also indicate that a former Trump-building doorman named Dino Sajudin was paid $30,000 to stay silent about an unverified claim that, nearly 30 years ago, Trump fathered a child out of wedlock with a young Trump Organization employee.
.. But there are twists to the known NDAs — not least, the remarkable coincidence that the same Los Angeles–based lawyer, Keith Davidson, turns up representing each of the muzzled women.
.. Clifford worked through her manager, a former porn actress, Gina Rodriguez, whom she met through the latter’s husband
.. Cohen also allegedly called Rodriguez, whose husband, Deuschle, answered the phone. He recalls that Cohen warned him, “You tell Gina if she ever wants to work in this business again then she needs to call me immediately.”
.. Clifford explains that the fake names, coupled with the fact that Trump himself did not sign the document, were intended to enable Trump falsely to deny knowledge of the arrangement... When the Journal learned of the agreement in January 2017 and began sniffing around, Clifford signed a statement denying that the sexual encounter had occurred. She now says Cohen used “intimidation and coercive tactics” to induce her signature... McDougal decided to tell her story in May 2016 — when Trump was plowing through the GOP primaries... Through a mutual friend, she found Davidson, who told her that a deal with AMI could result in a “seven-figure publishing contract” with an initial $500,000 payment in an escrow account. But after an AMI official interviewed her extensively, the company initially declined to buy the story and Davidson confessed that there was no escrow money. AMI explains that it chose not to publish the story because it could not be verified, but concedes discussing McDougal’s allegations with Cohen “as part of its reporting process.”.. Weeks later, though, when McDougal was in negotiations with ABC News, Davidson informed her that AMI had a new proposal: AMI would buy her story but not publish it owing to Pecker’s relationship with Trump. The company would pay $150,000 (a sizable chunk of which went to Davidson)... The deal was especially attractive to the model-turned-fitness-instructor because she was additionally promised that AMI would run her fitness columns and feature her on at least two publication covers... Interestingly, just yesterday, the Wall Street Journal broke news about another NDA cobbled together by Cohen and Davidson. Turns out that in late 2017, Cohen negotiated a $1.6 million hush-money pay-off by his client, Elliott Broidy, a top Republican fundraiser with close ties to Trump... The silenced beneficiary of the NDA is a different, currently unidentified former Playboy model, who became pregnant during an extramarital affair with Broidy. The model, who apparently terminated the pregnancy, was represented by Davidson. And here’s a coincidence for you: The NDA is rife with pseudonyms. Broidy and the model are referred to, respectively, as “David Dennison” and “Peggy Peterson,” the same names used in the Trump–Clifford NDA... If that’s not enough camouflage, the lawyers have phony names, too — Cohen is listed as “Dennis Donohue,” and Davidson as “Paul Patterson.” Cute, no?.. the only thing protected in a lawyer’s office are attorney–client communications and work product.If Cohen had incriminating items unrelated to attorney work in his office, being a lawyer does not shield him from liability.Furthermore, if there is no attorney–client relationship on a particular matter, there is no privilege.. Trump and Cohen both say that Cohen did not tell Trump about the Clifford arrangement. Sounds implausible, but onits face it means there was no attorney–client relationship regarding that transaction... More important, if a lawyer is involved with a client in a criminal conspiracy, the crime-fraud exception to the attorney–client privilege strips their communications of privileged status. It seems evident that prosecutors are investigating on the theory that Clifford, McDougal, and perhaps others were defrauded or extorted into silence. The fact that they accepted money does not foreclose the possibility that their agreement to remain silent was procured, in part, by trickery or threats.
Trump’s allies worry that federal investigators may have seized recordings made by his attorney
President Trump’s personal attorney Michael D. Cohen sometimes taped conversations with associates, according to three people familiar with his practice, and allies of the president are worried that the recordings were seized by federal investigators in a raid of Cohen’s office and residences this week.
.. Investigators were also looking for any records related to adult-film star Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal, who both received payments after alleged affairs with Trump.
.. Legal experts said Cohen’s taped conversations would be viewed by prosecutors as highly valuable.
“If you are looking for evidence, you can’t do any better than people talking on tape,” said Nick Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor.
Such recordings “would be considered a gold mine,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University who specializes in legal ethics.
“The significance is 9.5 to 10 on a 10-point scale,” he added, noting that investigators know “that when people speak on the phone, they are not guarded. They don’t imagine that the conversation will surface.”
Federal investigators would not automatically get access to any tapes that might have been seized in the raids. First, the recordings would be reviewed by a separate Justice Department team and possibly by a federal judge.
.. Cohen wanted his business calls on tape so he could use them later as leverage, one person said. Cohen frequently noted that under New York law, only one party had to consent to the taping of a conversation, this person added.
During the 2016 race, Cohen — who did not have a formal role on the campaign — had a reputation among campaign staff as someone to avoid, in part because he was believed to be secretly taping conversations... One outside Trump adviser said Cohen may have begun recording his conversations in an attempt to emulate his boss, who has long boasted — often with no evidence — about secretly taping private conversations.
.. “Back in the early 2000s, Trump used to tell me all the time that he was recording me when I covered him as reporter for the New York Times,” O’Brien wrote.
.. But after Trump sued him for libel shortly after his biography came out, O’Brien’s lawyers deposed Trump in December 2007 — during which Trump admitted he had not, in fact, clandestinely taped O’Brien.
“I’m not equipped to tape-record,” Trump said in the deposition. “I may have said it once or twice to him just to — on the telephone, because everything I said to him he’d write incorrectly; so just to try and keep it honest.”