Former Donald Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen admitted to giving his lawyer non-existent cases to cite as part of an attempt to conclude his supervised release following his guilty plea to charges of tax evasion and campaign finance crimes in 2018.
In a pair of court documents unsealed Friday, Cohen and his legal team told Manhattan federal Judge Jesse Furman that attorney David Schwartz presented fake subpoenas provided by Cohen and produced by the artificial intelligence service Google Bard to argue for the end of judicial oversight of Cohen. last month.
“As I am not a lawyer, I have not kept up with emerging trends (and related risks) in legal technology and did not realize that Google Bard was a generative text service that, like Chat-GPT, could display quotes and descriptions that seemed real. but in reality they were not,” Cohen said in a seven-page statement submitted to Furman on Thursday.
Michael Cohen admitted to providing false legal subpoenas to his attorney in an effort to conclude his supervised release. Steven Hirsch for NYPost The appeal came after a brief period of incarceration and home confinement for pleading guilty to campaign fraud as former President Donald Trump’s legal advisor in 2018. AFP via Getty Images
“Instead, I understood that it was a super powerful search engine and had used it repeatedly in other contexts to (successfully) find accurate information online.”
Schwartz filed the Nov. 29 filing without verifying whether the cases Cohen presented to him were real, and he faced sanctions if he did not disclose the “potentially fraudulent conduct,” the documents show.
In a separate letter to the judge, Cohen’s attorney, Danya Perry, said her client had “no ethical obligation to verify the accuracy of his research” and placed the blame squarely on Schwartz.
False Pero case subpoenas could cast doubt on Cohen’s testimony for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal corporate fraud case against Trump. GNMiller/NYPost
“Mr. Schwartz…had an obligation to verify legal representations made in a motion he filed,” Perry wrote, saying the attorney mistakenly believed Perry had filed the subpoenas herself, adding that Schwartz had a track record of being “not meticulous about the accuracy of his citations.”
“The records show that Mr. Cohen did absolutely nothing wrong. “He trusted his attorney, as he had every right to do,” Perry said in a statement to the Post. “Unfortunately, his attorney appears to have made an honest mistake by not verifying the citations in the brief he drafted and filed.”
The mess could cast doubt on Cohen’s potential testimony in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal corporate fraud case against Trump, as well as New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud case.
Bragg charged the 77-year-old former president in April with 34 counts for allegedly making “hush money” payments through Cohen to former porn star Stormy Daniels. Stormy Daniel
Bragg charged the 77-year-old former president in March with 34 counts of allegedly concealing business records to conceal “hush money” payments sent through Cohen to former porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
The money was intended to prevent both women from going public before the 2016 election that they had affairs with the married Trump.
James also filed a $250 million civil fraud case against Trump last year, alleging that he had inflated the assets of the Trump Organization to secure more favorable loan and insurance terms.
Bob Costello, a lawyer who previously advised Cohen but testified in Trump’s defense before the Manhattan grand jury earlier this year, said he had a “lie, cheat, steal” mentality. Davidoff Hutcher & Citro, LLC
Cohen emerged as a prominent grand jury witness in the hush money case, testifying in a Manhattan court in October about his former boss’ attempts to artificially boost his net worth.
James’ office has downplayed Cohen’s importance in the civil fraud case, noting that the judge in that matter has said the question of Trump’s liability “did not lie with him.” [Cohen] absolutely.”
Prior to Bragg’s indictment, a 2018 letter also emerged showing Cohen lying to federal election officials saying he “used his own personal funds to facilitate a $130,000 payment to Ms. Stephanie Clifford” (the real name of Daniels) in 2016.
However, Cohen pleaded guilty in August to making in-kind contributions to the Trump campaign through payments to Daniels to buy her silence.
The former lawyer, now 57, served about a year in prison before being released in 2020 due to concerns about the spread of COVID-19 in prisons. He then served a period of home confinement before being released on supervised release.
Bob Costello, a lawyer who previously advised Cohen but testified in Trump’s defense before the Manhattan grand jury earlier this year, said the former legal adviser had a “lie, cheat, steal” mentality, ABC News reported.
“I’m trying to tell the truth to the grand jury,” Costello told reporters after his testimony. “If they want to go after Donald Trump and they have solid evidence, so be it. Michael Cohen is not solid evidence.”
A spokeswoman for Bragg’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Categories: Trending
Source: vtt.edu.vn