Trump seeks to delay own Justice Department in Cohen probe

[MANHATTEN] US President Donald Trump took the extraordinary step of asking a judge to block his own Justice Department from viewing evidence about his private lawyer seized last week in an FBI raid.

The president's attorneys filed court papers on Sunday seeking to temporarily bar Justice Department prosecutors from reviewing evidence taken during an April 9 raid on the home, office, hotel room, safety-deposit box and phones of Mr Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Some material may involve communications between Mr Trump and Mr Cohen, and should be reviewed first by Mr Trump, not federal prosecutors in New York who are investigating Mr Cohen, the president's lawyers argued.

Prosecutors want a separate group of government lawyers to review the material first and determine what's covered by the attorney-client privilege - a process Trump's lawyers say is unfair.

"In the highly politicised, even fevered atmosphere that envelops this matter, it is simply unreasonable to expect that a team of prosecutors, even if not directly involved in the separate investigation of Mr Cohen, could perform a privilege review in the manner necessary to safeguard the important interests of the President," Mr Trump's attorney, Joanna Hendon, wrote in an eight-page letter to the judge.

Amid the spectacle of Mr Trump's challenge to the US prosecutors, the president's attorneys will appear in Manhattan federal court on Monday to join Mr Cohen's request to block prosecutors from using the records for now in their fast-moving investigation of Mr Cohen.

Expected to be present in court will be Mr Cohen himself and adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who claims she had sex with Mr Trump in 2006 and took a US$130,000 hush payment days before the 2016 election. Mr Cohen says he paid the money on his own and wasn't reimbursed.

The legal maneuvering is the latest twist in parallel US investigations that Mr Trump has assailed as a "witch hunt."

In Washington, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is probing possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election, while the US attorney in New York has opened his own investigation of Mr Cohen's activities.

Mr Trump's aides consider the Cohen inquiry, which has been underway for several months, to pose the greater threat to the president, the New York Times reported April 13.

"The question now before the court is, who should perform the initial review of the seized materials to assess whether they are, or are not, subject to a valid claim of privilege," Ms Hendon wrote. The choice is between a "team consisting of colleagues of the prosecutors assigned to this investigation, or the President, who is the holder of the privilege."

ATTORNEY-CLIENT

At a court hearing on Friday, Mr Cohen's lawyers estimated that the evidence seized by the FBI includes "thousands, if not millions" of documents protected by the attorney-client privilege, including communications with Mr Trump and with other Cohen clients not involved in the investigations.

They also invoked the work-product privilege, which protects material prepared by a lawyer in the course of legal representation.

Prosecutors argued in their own filing on Friday that the investigation of Mr Cohen focuses on his private business dealings and that evidence uncovered so far indicates Mr Cohen has done "little to no legal work."

They want the separate group of prosecutors, or a so-called taint team, to review the seized documents to weed out any that might be covered by the privilege. The privilege does not cover communications in furtherance of a crime.

In their filing on Sunday night, Mr Trump's lawyers said a government review team won't be fair to the president.

Prosecutors "already pre-judged the matter of privilege, repeatedly urging that few privileged documents are likely to be found," according to the filing. That "disinclination" to find privilege is "a bias that virtually guarantees that there will not be a fair privilege review of the seized materials."

They want the documents turned over to Mr Cohen's lawyers, who in turn would allow Mr Trump and his attorneys to review them before prosecutors see them.

"The lodestar is fairness, not speed," Ms Hendon wrote.

Prosecutors in New York have not said what specifically they're probing, although they said in a court filing that "the crimes being investigated involve acts of concealment by Mr Cohen.''

The Washington Post has said prosecutors are investigating possible wire fraud, bank fraud and campaign finance violations.

COHEN'S CLIENTS

At Friday's hearing, US District Judge Kimba Wood asked Mr Cohen's lawyer for a list of his clients, which they're expected to present to her on Monday.

Mr Cohen wasn't in court Friday. Instead, television cameras caught him sitting on a bench outside the Loews Regency Hotel in Manhattan - where the FBI conducted one of the raids on April 9 - chatting with a group of men smoking cigars.

Judge Wood directed Mr Cohen to appear in court on Monday afternoon, when she is set to resume considering the matter.

In a courtroom sure to be standing-room-only, Mr Cohen will encounter the adult-film actress whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. She is suing Mr Trump and Mr Cohen to void a non-disclosure agreement she signed with a company set up by Mr Cohen just before the election.

Mr Trump has denied having had a relationship with Ms Daniels and said he didn't know where Mr Cohen got the money.

Mr Cohen's lawyer has said that Mr Mueller referred some of the evidence uncovered in his investigation to prosecutors in New York. After the FBI raid on Cohen, Mr Trump stepped up his criticism of Mr Mueller.

His spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, told reporters that the president has the authority to fire Mr Mueller on his own.

The regulations that created the special counsel position say that only the attorney general or his designee can fire the special counsel and only for good cause, such as misconduct, conflict of interest or a violation of Justice Department policies.

Wood, the judge in the case, was famously nominated for US attorney general by President Bill Clinton in 1993, only to have her nomination withdrawn over revelations that she had employed an undocumented worker.

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