Free Republic

A federal judge agreed to appoint the same special master from the government's case against Michael Cohen in 2018 to review whether materials seized from the homes and offices of Rudy Giuliani and Victoria Toensing are subject to attorney-client privilege....

A Manhattan federal judge on Tuesday ordered that a former New York City accountant who admitted to scoping out the New York Stock Exchange for al Qaeda be released early from his 18-year prison sentence. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood said Sabirhan Hasanoff, 44, of Brooklyn, had shown “extraordinary and compelling” reasons for being resentenced to time served under a law allowing the early “compassionate release” of some prison inmates. Wood, who sentenced Hasanoff in 2013, cited evidence he was the only available caregiver for his mother, who is in poor health, and his “striking and unique efforts” to rehabilitate...

It’s just nuts that the city might have to cough up billions for supposedly racist teacher-certification exams it stopped using long ago. But don’t count on Mayor de Blasio to fight it. To be clear: No one has ever had to show that the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test, aka LAST, was actually discriminatory. “Disparate impact” law makes it necessary to demonstrate only that members of minority groups perform worse on an exam than their peers. And if officials can’t then prove the tests are effective at screening out unqualified would-be employees — a highly subjective measure — well, case...

Cohen: Trump told me to pay off women to influence the election President Trump’s personal fixer Michael Cohen admitted in court Tuesday that he paid two women hush money — “at direction of the candidate,” a clear reference to Trump — to influence the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s name was not uttered but the implication was clear as Cohen admitted he cut a $150,000 check in 2016 to protect “the candidate.” “On or about summer 2016, in coordination and with and at the behest of the candidate, I and the CEO of a media company worked together to keep an...

For weeks, California trial lawyer Michael Avenatti has seized a starring role in the salacious hush-money scandal unfolding around President Donald Trump. Inside a courtroom in New York on Wednesday, as cameras swarmed outside, a federal judge decided she had heard enough from Mr. Avenatti, telling him to take his “publicity tour” elsewhere.

Michael Avenatti has withdrawn his request to represent adult-film star Stormy Daniels in the case centered on the FBI raid of President Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen. Shortly after a conference hearing Wednesday in a federal district court in Manhattan, Avenatti withdrew his request to weigh in on the case. Cohen is reportedly being investigated, among other things, for the $130,000 he paid Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election to keep quiet about the affair she says she had with Trump. Avenatti reportedly faced tough questions during the hearing from federal District Judge Kimba Wood, who told him in court...

As attorneys for Michael Cohen rush to meet Judge Kimba Wood’s Friday deadline to complete a privilege review of over 3.7 million documents seized in the April 9 raids of Cohen’s New York properties and law office, a source representing this matter has disclosed to ABC News that the law firm handling the case for Cohen is not expected to represent him going forward. To date, Cohen has been represented by Stephen Ryan and Todd Harrison of the Washington and New York firm, McDermott, Will & Emery LLP. No replacement counsel has been identified as of this time. Cohen, now...

The Democrats’ ongoing quest to topple the president. The new House Intelligence Committee report finds no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The former FBI boss tasked with finding the collusion, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, recently announced that President Trump is not his target. This has left many observers puzzled, but one Russian actor may be able to put things in perspective.   In the 1981 Fort Apache the Bronx, police officers throw a man off a roof. Many American viewers were horrified but Russian actor Yakov Smirnoff had a different take. “This is nothing,” Smirnoff said. “In Russia,...

President Trump and his supporters made headway in accusing the Federal government of violating or endangering attorney-client privilege. They’re not wrong. The attorney-client privilege is recognized by our Supreme Court as one of the oldest recognized privileges for confidential communications. See Hunt v. Blackburn, 128 U. S. 464 (1888). The privilege is intended to encourage "full and frank communication between attorneys and their clients and thereby promote broader public interests in the observance of law and the administration of justice,” the Supreme Court explained in 1982. And, in 1998, the Supreme Court confirmed that attorney-client confidentiality is so important to...

Here’s a little tidbit from yesterday’s Michael Cohen hearing that’s pretty interesting… According to reports from inside the courtroom, Judge Kimba Wood was ready to allow Michael Cohen to submit the name of his 3rd client — who we now know is Sean Hannity — under seal, but an attorney for CNN and the New York Times convinced her otherwise. From Natasha Bertrand, The Atlantic:

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Tired of all this Winning yet? – Heads had to be exploding all over the fake mainstream news media on Monday, as President Trump hit 51% approval in the Rasmussen Survey and several other polls showed the President’s approval ticking upwards. These results have to be maddening to all the fake reporters and editors who wake up every day intent on slanting their reporting against the current POTUS in their tireless efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2016 national election. Even worse for the fake media and its masters at the...

The Federal Judge, Kimba Wood, who is making decisions in the case against President Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen, is the same person who officiated George Soros wedding. Go figure. Today Judge Kimba Wood demanded, in open court, that attorney Michael Cohen state -on the record- the names of his clients….. Then, moments later, in a decision about the seized records taken by the FBI during their raid last week, Judge Wood demanded all of the Cohen records be transferred into a federal database so they could be searched, reviewed, categorized and then leaked more efficiently to the media.

An unnamed client of Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's longtime personal attorney, is Fox News host Sean Hannity. The revelation came after U.S. District Court judge Kimba Wood ordered Cohen to disclose the name in a court hearing on Monday. In an earlier court filing Monday morning, lawyers for Cohen refused to identify the recent client — one of three people Cohen represented between 2017 and 2018. The lawyers also refused to identify the names of other past clients. Lawyers for Cohen — whose business records were seized by FBI agents April 9 — said the then-unnamed client had told...

Michael Cohen is asking Judge Kimba Wood to suppress legal documents related to his relationship with Donald Trump in his trial over payments to the pornographic actress Stormy Daniels. Wood also officiated at a non-denominational wedding service for billionaire George Soros in 2013. She was nominated as Attorney General by President Bill Clinton but withdrew in a flap over her hiring of a nanny who was not eligible to work in the U.S. As a cash-strapped student she once spent five days in a training course to be a Playboy bunny. Kimba Maureen Wood is a Senior United States District...

<p>In a room filled with the biggest names in New York media — from Megyn Kelly, Savannah Guthrie and Gayle King to Lester Holt and Don Lemon — the man everyone wanted to hear from was Stormy Daniels’ lawyer.</p> <p>At the Hollywood Reporter’s annual “35 Most Powerful People in New York Media” event at the Pool, the unlikely man of the hour was Michael Avenatti, who has barely been off-air since he started representing the porn star in inimitable style.</p>

Michael Cohen is a fraud of a lawyer who works exclusively for President Trump, federal prosecutors charged Friday. “Cohen has told at least one witness that he has only [one] client — President Trump,” the lawyers wrote in court documents, challenging Cohen’s claims that records seized in raids on his home and office Monday should be protected by attorney-client privilege. And he’s barely doing any “legal work” for Trump, either, they claim. “[Reviews of the records] indicate that Cohen is in fact performing little to no legal work, and that zero ­e-mails were exchanged with President Trump,” according to the...

NEW YORK — Lawyers for President Donald Trump and his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen went to court Friday trying to stop federal prosecutors from getting at private material — but wound up with a judge ordering them to disclose Cohen’s client list in public. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood on Friday ordered attorneys for Cohen to hand over a list of Cohen’s law clients and proof of their relationship by 10 a.m. Monday, so she can decide whether materials seized from Cohen’s office by federal law enforcement agents last week should be protected by attorney-client privilege. That list will...

When Bill Clinton was president, he allowed Hillary to assume authority over a health care reform. Even after threats and intimidation, she couldn’t get a vote in a Democrat controlled congress. This fiasco cost the American taxpayers about $13 million in cost for studies, promotion and other efforts. Hillary 1 Then President Clinton gave Hillary authority over selecting a female attorney general. Her first two selections were Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood – both were forced to withdraw their names from consideration. Next she chose Janet Reno – husband Bill described her selection as “my worst mistake.” Some may not...

A federal judge is questioning whether a new exam for aspiring teachers in New York is discriminatory against minorities, a case that could derail the state’s efforts to create a more rigorous set of tests for entry into the profession. Black and Hispanic applicants have been passing one of the exams, intended to measure reading and writing skills, at lower rates than white candidates, prompting concerns of decreased diversity in the teaching ranks. The judge, Kimba M. Wood of Federal District Court in Manhattan, has asked the state for extensive documentation on the development of the test, which was first...

* Since 2009, Mr. Heicklen has stood there and at courthouse entrances elsewhere and handed out pamphlets encouraging jurors to ignore the law if they disagree with it, and to render verdicts based on conscience. That concept, called jury nullification, is highly controversial, and courts are hostile to it. But federal prosecutors have now taken the unusual step of having Mr. Heicklen indicted on a charge that his distributing of such pamphlets at the courthouse entrance violates the law against jury tampering. He was arraigned on Friday in a somewhat contentious hearing before Judge Kimba M. Wood, who entered a...