Michael Cohen’s lawyer possibly included fake cases in filing, federal judge says

A lawyer for Michael Cohen, a former lawyer for President Trump, may have included fake cases in a November filing, a federal judge said. 

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman questioned cases highlighted in a motion by David M. Schwartz, a lawyer for Cohen, to have Cohen’s supervised release ended early in a Tuesday filing. Cohen pleaded guilty to charges including tax evasion and campaign finance violations back in 2018 and was sentenced to three years in prison and three years of supervised release, but only spent a little over a year in prison. 

Furman noted three cases that Schwartz mentioned in the November filing, saying “[a]s far as the Court can tell, none of these cases exist.”

“In light of the foregoing, Mr. Schwartz shall, no later than December 19, 2023, provide copies of the three cited decisions to the Court,” Furman said in the filing. 

Cohen, once an ally of Trump, has turned on him in recent years. In the midst of his own legal woes, he has gone after his former boss for his own. He took a jab at the former president for not testifying in his New York civil fraud trial Monday.

“He’s scared, and he’s rightfully scared,” Cohen said in an interview on CNN. “Everybody’s talking about how, you know, potentially, ‘The lawyers gave him the right advice, that he finally took the right advice.’ Knowing Donald for a decade-and-a-half, I can assure you it had absolutely nothing to do with advice of counsel.”

The former president was expected to take the stand at the beginning of the week. However, he backed out of doing so Sunday.

“As everyone knows, I have very successfully & conclusively testified in the corrupt, Biden directed, New York state attorney general’s rigged trial against me,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.