LEGAL/MICHAEL COHEN/NEW YORK/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The bully president has been taking it on the chin from coast to coast. First, in the Southern District of New York, he has been fighting for a special protocol that would permit him and his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to review — before the government can — the materials of Cohen that the FBI seized and identify privileged documents. Trump’s legal argument is thin; he argues, in essence, that he is very prominent and that permitting him an initial screening role is only fair. Judge Kimba Wood has not ruled. She might approve some modest departures from the normal procedure to permit a special master to have a role in culling the documents, but the suggestion that Trump and Cohen should have a first pass at the documents seems to be a nonstarter. Wood seemed to make her stance clear when she declared that the integrity of the Southern District attorney’s office is ‘unimpeachable.’ The truth is that the President’s offer to review the documents borders on the bizarre: Trump has less basis for determining whether documents are privileged than any lawyer in the proceedings, and he is obviously biased. Moreover, the offer completely undercuts any effort to argue in this and future proceedings that he is too busy to sit for a deposition. The gambit has virtually no chance of succeeding and serves primarily to communicate how anxious the President is about the seized documents.”
–Harry Litman, “In court, Trump’s fortunes are plummeting,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, April 26, 2018 9:11 pm