Trump’s ‘Fox & Friends’ interview being used against Cohen

Manhattan federal prosecutors have already seized on President Trump’s comments on “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning to discredit statements made by his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who’s under criminal investigation — and to note that most of the documents seized are likely not protected by attorney-client privilege.

In a Manhattan federal court filing Thursday, prosecutors said they are now OK with appointing a “special prosecutor” to take over the review documents seized in an FBI raid on Cohen’s office, residence and hotel room. The request for a special master was originally made by Cohen.

But the feds urged Manhattan federal court Judge Kimba Wood to accept their plan for a special master and not Cohen’s. They argued that Cohen simply wants to drag the process out — a theory that they said is supported by inflated statements Cohen and his lawyers have made about the extent that the documents seized are protected by attorney-client privilege — including his legal representation of Trump.

“As the Court is aware, after originally stating that the Government seized ‘thousands, if not millions,’ of pages of privileged documents, Cohen subsequently identified three current clients,” the feds said.

One of those clients, Fox News host Sean Hannity, has since said that “Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees,” the feds remarked.

“Another, President Trump, reportedly said on cable television this morning that Cohen performs ‘a tiny, tiny little fraction’ of his overall legal work,” prosecutors added.

“These statements by two of Cohen’s three identified clients suggest that the seized materials are unlikely to contain voluminous privileged documents, further supporting the importance of efficiency here.”

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