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.
The judge announced the appointment of Barbara Jones, a former judge for the Southern District of New York, on Friday, marking the latest development of the federal investigation into whether the former New York City mayor violated foreign lobbying laws.
ERIC SWALWELL’S ATTORNEYS SEARCHING FOR MO BROOKS TO SERVE LAWSUIT
“Judge Jones ‘efficiently and meticulously reviewed’ tens of thousands of items over a period of four months and made privilege designations that were not objected to by the parties,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebekah Donaleski of the decision, according to a report by Law and Crime.
During the Cohen case, Jones charged a rate of about $700 an hour, with the government paying half the bill and Cohen and the Trump Organization footing the other half.
Judge J. Paul Oetken, who selected Jones, cleared her of any disqualification that would be prompted by a conflict of interest as a longtime partner at Bracewell LLC, the same firm where Giuliani served as a shareholder before January 2016. However, Jones’s time there did not overlap with Giuliani’s.
Oetken adopted a proposal from prosecutors last month to appoint a special master to sort through 18 electronic devices recovered by federal authorities in raids at Giuliani’s New York home and office. A search warrant was also carried out on the home of Toensing, a lawyer and Giuliani ally.
Cohen, whose office and hotel room were similarly raided by federal agents in 2018, lost his law license after he pleaded guilty to multiple felonies in 2018. He was sentenced to three years in federal prison but got out early last year and put into home confinement due to coronavirus concerns. Cohen wrote a book that was released last year, Disloyal, which describes how he became part of a “cult of personality” working for former President Donald Trump as his personal lawyer.
Giuliani, 76, is reportedly under federal investigation over whether he illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian individuals who urged him to look into the former president’s political rivals, including now-President Joe Biden. Giulian has not been charged with a crime and denied ever representing a foreign national, calling the evidence seized by the FBI “exculpatory evidence.”
The investigation is being led by Audrey Strauss, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the same post Giuliani held in the 1980s before becoming mayor of New York City.
