A lawyer for Michael Cohen appears to have cited non-existent court rulings in a legal filing seeking to have his client’s post-prison supervision terminated early, according to a federal judge in New York who is threatening penalties.
“As far as the Court can tell, none of these cases exist,” Furman wrote. He added that if copies of the rulings aren’t submitted, he wanted “a thorough 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.”
Mr. Cohen, who served as a personal attorney for former President Donald Trump, gained notoriety as the “fixer” but later fell out of grace to become one of the former president’s loudest critics.
Mr. Schwartz did not immediately respond to phone and email messages Wednesday.
E. Danya Perry, a new attorney representing Mr. Cohen, said she could not verify the case law cited in Mr. Schwartz’s motion.
In late 2018, Mr. Cohen was sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion, campaign finance charges, and lying to Congress. He served about 13 1/2 months in prison, along with 18 months in home confinement, before being placed on three years of supervised release.
Mr. Cohen, 57, has been on supervised release since November 2021.
During discussions of possible sanctions, Judge Furman referred to a separate, unrelated case in a Manhattan federal court earlier this year involving the citing of case law that did not exist. Two lawyers in that case were fined $5,000 for citing bogus cases invented by ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot.
There is no mention of the use of artificial intelligence in the motion issued by Judge Schwartz.
Mr. Cohen has served approximately two years of his supervised release from prison. His campaign finance conviction came after he arranged payouts to prevent porn star Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal from making public claims of extramarital affairs with former President Trump during his 2016 campaign.
On Nov. 29, Mr. Schwartz filed a motion requesting Mr. Cohen’s supervised release ended early, citing his client’s testimony in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ ongoing civil lawsuit alleging President Trump and his business inflated his wealth in financial documents.
Ms. Perry said she conducted her own research to support the judge’s motion, and she could not verify the case law cited by Mr. Schwartz.
“Consistent with my ethical obligation of candor to the Court, I advised Judge Furman of this issue,” Ms. Perry said in a statement, adding that she believed the motion still had merit.
In his motion to end Mr. Cohen’s supervised release, Mr. Schwartz cited three cases that he claimed were all affirmed by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.
But Judge Furman said one of those citations actually referred to a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that was unrelated to supervised release. A second case mentioned by Mr. Schwartz is a Board of Veterans Appeals decision, the judge said. And the third citation “appears to correspond to nothing at all,” Judge Furman wrote.
