LOS ANGELES – In a filing which seems to have gone largely (and surprisingly) unnoticed by media outlets, last week attorneys for Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen and Donald Trump filed a joint report on the status of the criminal proceedings involving Cohen in New York.
The joint status report is part of the preparation for a hearing later this week, when Judge S. James Otero will hear arguments on the defense’s request for a restraining order against Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti to muzzle the outspoken, media-friendly attorney and keep him from commenting on Cohen’s case. Otero is also considering continuing a stay on the case which is currently in place but set to expire at the end of July.
In the joint statement, about the only thing on which the two sides appear to agree is there has been relatively little recent movement in the New York case – and neither side knows when the next substantive developments will come.
“The criminal investigation of Mr. Cohen being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation… and United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York… remains ongoing,” the parties wrote in their joint report. “However, the Parties do not know when the Government’s investigation of Mr. Cohen will be completed, or if a criminal indictment of Mr. Cohen will occur.”
Following the raid on Cohen’s office, the progress New York case slowed to a crawl, primarily due to the massive number of documents the parties in that case (and the “Special Master” assigned to the case) had to review to see which were subject to attorney-client privilege or the attorney-work product privilege.
In the report, the parties also said they’re in the dark concerning the “exact scope of the investigation of Mr. Cohen” and “the full extent to which it overlaps with this case.”
Much of the report is dedicated to recounting things like Avenatti trying to intervene in the New York case on the basis that “certain privileged and/or confidential information of Plaintiff was included” in the materials seized from Cohen’s office, only to later drop his bid to intervene in the case when the judge said if she were to admit him pro hac vice, Avenatti would have to stop his “publicity tour.”
For their part, the attorneys for Cohen and Trump used the joint report as another opportunity to argue in favor of continuing the stay in the case, asserting that Avenatti’s attempt to intervene in the New York case and Stormy’s involvement in the government’s investigation “confirms that there is substantial overlap between this case and the ongoing investigation of Mr. Cohen, and that Defendants would be severely prejudiced if the stay is lifted at this juncture.”
Attorneys for the defendants also claimed in the joint report that during the preparation of the report, they asked Avenatti for information regarding Stormy’s involvement in the New York case, only to be rebuffed by Avenatti.
“Defendant Cohen’s counsel requested that Plaintiff provide information pertaining to (Stormy’s) involvement with the SDNY investigation and Mr. Avenatti’s recent statement that Mr. Cohen would be arrested by the end of the Summer,” the defense counsel wrote in the report. “Plaintiff refused to provide any such information, which would be relevant to the overlap between the criminal and civil proceedings, on the basis that it would purportedly interfere with the criminal investigation. However, as discussed above, it is reasonable to conclude that Plaintiff and her counsel have no problem disclosing such communications with the media so long as it serves their purpose.”
“Given the extensive communications between Clifford’s counsel and the government, it is reasonable to conclude that Clifford knows more about the overlap between this case and the investigation than Cohen does at this stage of the proceedings,” they added.
Avenatti, meanwhile, renewed his argument that there’s no call for a stay in the case.
“Mr. Cohen has not been indicted,” Stormy’s counsel noted in the report. “Although it has been more than three months since the FBI raised Mr. Cohen’s home, office, and hotel room, Mr. Cohen has been unable to demonstrate with actual evidence that the government is investigating him for his conduct in relation to his representation of Mr. Trump with regards to the October 2016 non-disclosure and settlement agreement, and $130,000 payment, that are at issue in this lawsuit.”
Avenatti also argued the points made by the defense with respect to his attempt to intervene in the New York case (and its mention of a meeting between Stormy and the prosecutors in the New York case which prosecutors cancelled because Avenatti allegedly leaked word of the meeting to the media) are “completely irrelevant.”
“It has nothing to do with the narrow question presently before the Court, which is to decide whether the stay should be extended,” Avenatti wrote. “Defendants’ inclusion of this recitation instead is designed to create a sideshow in an unfortunate attempt to impugn the character and credibility of Plaintiff’s counsel before this Court.”
On Friday, at what was originally scheduled as a status hearing on the stay issued in the case, Otero will hear arguments related to both the stay and Cohen’s motion for a restraining order on Avenatti. The hearing is scheduled for 9am.
