An attorney for Michael Cohen may have cited fictitious legal cases while arguing for an early end to his client’s supervised release, a judge wrote in an order Tuesday.
Former Donald Trump lawyer and fixer Cohen—who was jailed after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations and other charges in 2018—was seeking an end to court supervision of his case. In a court filing last month, Cohen’s attorney, David M. Schwartz, cited three District Court cases as part of his rationale for the move—all of which, it turns out, are baloney.
“As far as the Court can tell, none of these cases exist,” U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman wrote in an order Tuesday. Furman also ordered Schwartz to provide evidence that the cases are real within a week or produce a sworn declaration and explanation of “how the motion came to cite cases that do not exist and what role, if any, Mr. Cohen played in drafting or reviewing the motion before it was filed.”
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It’s not yet clear how the cases made their way into Schwartz’s motion, but there is a recent precedent for such bizarre occurrences. In June, two lawyers were fined $5,000 after filing a legal brief which cited cases invented by the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot ChatGPT.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 after he pleaded guilty to charges including making false statements to a federally insured bank, tax evasion, and campaign finance violations. The latter accusations related to hush money payments Cohen arranged to porn star Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal during the 2016 presidential race to cover up alleged affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs took place. Cohen spent slightly more than a year in prison and around 18 months in home confinement, according to the Associated Press
Cohen has since turned on his former ally, publicly criticizing Trump and assisting in legal proceedings against the former president. Cohen testified in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud case against the 2024 Republican frontrunner, and he’s also expected to be a key witness in the upcoming criminal case against Trump brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
