Judge to Avenatti: Quit ‘publicity tour’ if you want to be in Cohen case
Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti must stop his “publicity tour” if he wants to be a part of a court proceeding about materials seized in a criminal probe of President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, a Manhattan federal judge said Wednesday.
The proceeding, over whether the feds seized material protected by attorney-client privilege, including Cohen’s communications with Trump, is “a potential precursor” to criminal charges against Cohen, Judge Kimba Wood told Avenatti at a hearing.
The judge said she is worried that Avenatti’s “denigrating Mr. Cohen” could deprive him of a fair trial if he is criminally charged by the feds, who are looking into his business dealings, including a $130,000 “hush money” payment to Avenatti’s porn star client, who claims she had a fling with the President.
“You will not be able to declare your opinion of Mr. Cohen’s guilt,” Judge Wood said. “You will not be able to give publicity to documents that are not public.”
Avenatti said he would consider whether to make a motion to intervene in the matter.
In the meantime, his request to be a part of the proceeding without officially intervening was denied.
Avenatti has asked to be a part of the proceeding because he believes the feds may have seized communications between Daniels’ former lawyer, Keith Davidson, and Cohen that he claims could be protected by attorney-client privilege.
The feds, meanwhile, say they have turned over to Cohen everything they seized in an April FBI raid on his resident, office and hotel room, with the exception of materials from two Blackberries and the contents of a shredder so they can review the materials for privileged documents that should be off-limits to the feds.
Prosecutor Rachel Maimim said the two Blackberries are currently being hacked in the FBI’s Quantico headquarters and suggested that the feds are slowly piecing back together the contents to the shredder, which Maimim said were “not voluminous at all.”
The judge asked Cohen’s lawyer Todd Harrison if he could give the feds the passwords to the Blackberries. After some consultation with Cohen, Harrison told the judge that he could not because the Blackberries were roughly eight years old and that one or both may have been Cohen’s wife.
The judge set a deadline of June 15th for Cohen’s lawyers to turn over materials they have received from the feds to a “special master” hired to determine which documents are privileged and therefore off limits to the feds.
If they fail to meet the deadline, she will turn over the remaining materials to a government “taint team,” she said.
Much of the rest of the hearing was taken up by vicious bickering between Avenatti and lawyers for Cohen and Trump.
Cohen’s lawyer blasted Avenatti for publicly releasing Cohen’s banking records, calling it “a premeditated driveby shooting of my client’s rights.”
Avenatti shot back with allegations that Cohen leaked audio recordings of his discussions with Daniels’ former lawyer, Keith Davidson, had with Cohen. Davidson negotiated the $130,000 “hush money” payment to Daniels over her claims that she had a fling with President Trump.
Trump has denied any affair.
The exchange ended with Trump’s lawyer, Joanna Hendon, passing up a manilla folder to the judge that she said included evidence that Avenatti lied when said in a court filing that law firm Egan Avenatti never represented Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
“As recently as last week, the [Egan Avenatti] firm was in communications with the President’s counsel,” she said of the contents of the folder.
Hendon then blasted Avenatti’s court filing stating that Egan Avenatti was not the law firm for Daniels’ as “carefully constructed” and “misleading.”
Avenatti made the statements after Cohen’s lawyers told the judge that Egan Avenatti had been hit with a $10 million judgement in bankruptcy court tied to allegations that the firm owed money to a lawyer — and misstated its profits in order to avoid paying up.