[caption id="attachment_27368" align="alignnone" width="620"]
Michael Cohen. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)[/caption] Newly released documents by Manhattan federal prosecutors show that Michael Cohen, the embattled longtime personal attorney to President Donald Trump, is being investigated for criminal conduct “that largely centers on his personal business dealings.” “A federal magistrate judge found that there was probable cause to believe that Cohen’s premises and devices contained evidence, fruits and instrumentalities that specified federal crimes were committed,” wrote federal prosecutors, adding that the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York has already obtained search warrants on multiple different email accounts maintained by Cohen, and has conducted a privilege review of the materials obtained pursuant to those warrants. The searches were carried out as part of an ongoing grand jury investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and the FBI, according to a memo released Friday. “Here, the warrant authorized seizure of materials from Cohen, because the judge found probable cause to believe that such materials would include evidence of Cohen’s own crimes,” prosecutors said. Cohen claims that the materials seized include “thousands of privileged documents and communications related to numerous clients” of his, as well as privileged communications with Cohen's his own attorneys led by McDermott Will & Emery's Stephen Ryan in Washington, D.C. But Southern District prosecutors said based on information gathered in the investigation to date, the U.S. attorney’s office and the FBI have reason to believe that “Cohen has exceedingly few clients and a low volume of potentially privileged communications.” “It is neither apparent (i) that Cohen, in his capacity as an attorney, has many, or any, attorney-client relationships other than with President Donald Trump,” prosecutors said, nor “that the seized communications will include a significant volume of communications with that one identified client. This is so for several reasons.’ Cohen has told at least one witness that he has only one client—President Trump, prosecutors said. They added that review by the U.S. attorney’s office indicated zero emails were exchanged between Cohen and President Trump, the latter of whom has long been averse to electronic communication outside the realm of Twitter. Southern District prosecutors also shed light on Cohen’s “strategic alliance” with Squire Patton Boggs, which the Am Law 100 firm announced this week had ended. Cohen also claimed to have privileged communications through Squire Patton Boggs, but prosecutors said he has omitted facts about his relationship with the firm that render it unlikely that a significant volume of attorney-client privileged material, if any, was seized related to his nearly year-long relationship with the global legal giant. According to prosecutors, the strategic alliance agreement with Squire Patton Boggs provided that Cohen would receive a $500,000 annual “strategic alliance fee” from the firm, and under certain circumstances, Cohen would also receive a percentage of the fees charged by the firm for clients introduced to it by Cohen. The alliance agreement also spelled out other aspects of the relationship between Cohen and Squire Patton Boggs, including that Cohen would be given an office at the firm; Cohen would maintain his own computer server system not connected to the firm’s computer server system; and the firm would not have a key to Cohen’s office. For the duration of the agreement, Cohen introduced five clients to Squire Patton Boggs. Cohen did not maintain time sheets at the firm and Cohen did not bill any clients through the firm, prosecutors said, adding that Squire Patton Boggs is not aware one way or another whether Cohen billed any of the clients for services of any kind. “Given the relatively short duration of the Agreement, the limited number of clients involved, and the utterly segregated nature of Cohen’s relationship with the firm, that the number of such communications is small,” prosecutors said. The memo was written in opposition to Cohen's motion for a temporary restraining order seeking to prevent the U.S. attorney's office from reviewing documents seized from his office at Squire Patton Boggs and his room at the Loews Regency Hotel on Park Avenue in Manhattan. Cohen is staying at the hotel while his apartment undergoes a renovation.