The Special Master reviewing materials seized in the FBI's raid of Michael Cohen's home, office, and hotel room for possible attorney-client privilege says prosecutors officially received more than 1.3 million items Monday.
Special Master Barbara Jones writes her review continues, and she still is waiting for the Trump Organization to weigh in on which documents it considers off-limits.
Also today, BuzzFeed News posted what it says are the documents investigators retrieved from Cohen's shredder and pieced back together.
A close examination shows that the records are a combination of documents that prosecutors already had, handwritten notes about a taxi business, insurance papers, and correspondence from a woman described in court filings as a “vexatious litigant” who claims she is under government surveillance.
Rebuilt from thin strips of paper, the shredded records are sometimes difficult to comprehend. One page doesn’t include full words and is a jumble of numbers, letters, and bar codes. One document appears to be part of an envelope. There are fragments of handwritten notes. There is an invitation to a reception in Miami to meet with business representatives from Qatar. Several of the records seem to be insurance forms for an apartment.
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It remains to be seen whether any of the reconstructed documents are of use to federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York in their ongoing probe into Cohen, whose home, office, and hotel room were raided by the FBI in April. They are among nearly 4 million individual paper records or electronic files discovered on more than a dozen cellphones, computers, and other devices. Some of the devices — including old cellphones, cameras, and laptops — belonged to Cohen’s wife and children.
Prosecutors said in a recent letter to a judge that they also obtained more than 700 pages of messages extracted from encrypted apps such as Signal or WhatsApp.
Cohen has been in the spotlight of the Trump–Russia investigation since January 2017, when BuzzFeed News published a dossier that was circulating at the highest levels of the federal government and that alleged Cohen helped the Trump campaign collude with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election.
Reconstructed shredded documents
Here Are The Documents Recovered From Michael Cohen’s Shredder (BuzzFeed News)