None Of Michael Cohen's Shit Actually Privileged, Even Though He's DEFINITELY A REAL LAWYER
After Michael Cohen, graduate of the universe's worst law school and dedicated man-servant of a man he calls MIS-TURR TWUMP, got his ass raided by the FBI, there was much kerfuffle over all the stuff the feds seized, because after all, Michael Cohen is a real lawyer with real clients (Trump, Elliott Broidy and Sean Hannity for some reason ) and it is unfair and un-American to take all his communications, because ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE!
Indeed, it was such a maelstrom of terribleness that the president of the United States was forced to tweet Very Serious Proclamations about how "ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE IS DEAD!" (In the president's mind, if you have a conversation with a lawyer, even if you are using that lawyer -- who is really more of a fixer -- to commit crimes, those are automatically privileged conversations. The president is A Idiot.)
There was much argument over whether it would be sufficient for an FBI "Taint Team" to look through all Cohen's shit to determine what was privileged, or should the judge appoint a "special master" to figure that out. Ultimately a special master was appointed, even though the judge at the time was like, "Yeah, pretty sure two-thirds of your so-called clients have gone on TV and said you really didn't do hardly any legal work for them, and the president seems HELLBENT on blowing y'all's entire legal strategy anyway, so this is probably a waste of errbody's goddamn time." (Judge Kimba Wood did not say those words exactly , but we imagine she thought them.)
The first findings from that special master, Barbara Jones, are out, and they are precisely what one would expect in an FBI raid of a very serious and important lawyer with real clients who isn't actually just a criminal fixer thug baby loser. Just kidding, they are the opposite of that:
We will transcribe, because we are nice like that.
From eight boxes of "hard copy materials":
"Out of 639 total items consisting of 12,543 pages, the Special Master agrees with the Plaintiff and/or Intervenors and finds that 14 items are Privileged and/or Partially Privileged. The Special Master also finds that 3 items are not privileged."
Fourteen items out of 639! Superb "legal" practice you got going there, Michael Cohen. (To clarify, Cohen's lawyers agree that the 622 remaining items are just unprivileged bullshits.)
We are very curious, however, about the three items Cohen's team thinks are privileged, but the special master says are not. Are they dick pics from each of his three clients, Trump, Broidy and Hannity? Because really, Southern District of New York, you can KEEP THAT GROSS SHIT TO YOURSELVES, privilege or no.
From two phones and an iPad (and also two turntables and a microphone, probably):
Out of 291,770 total items, the Special Master agrees with the Plaintiff and/or Intervenors and finds that 148 items are Privileged and/or Partially Privileged and that 7 items are Highly Personal.
148 items out of 291,770! We guess attorney-client privilege really is dead ... but only when your lawyer went to Cooley Law School and isn't a real lawyer and you really didn't hire him for legal purposes anyway.
Those seven "highly personal" items, we are guessing, are Cohen's own dick pics (ALLEGEDLY!) and we agree with the special master that the public should not see those either, because PEE YEW.
As Politico notes, this is just the beginning:
Todd Harrison, a lawyer for Cohen, told the court last week that his firm had received about 3.7 million files, with about 1.3 million already turned over to Jones for her review.
If the rest of the files follow a similar pattern, we can expect that they will find approximately ZERO additional actual lawyer work and a bunch more dick pics of Sean Hannity, assuming they have found some already, and after all, it would be irresponsible to suggest that they haven't.
And on that note, everyone, have a delicious lunch!
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