NEW YORK _ Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have reassembled 16 pages of shredded documents seized from President Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen, and recovered 731 pages of encrypted text messages.
Prosecutors provided the update on material seized from Cohen's law office and residences during an April 9 raid in a letter Friday to Manhattan Federal Court Judge Kimba Wood.
Cohen has argued much of the material is subject to attorney-client privilege. He is under investigation for bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance law violations. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday prosecutors are also examining whether he broke the law by working as a secret lobbyist.
Prosecutors did not disclose the contents of the shredded documents or what was in the encrypted texts sent using the WhatsApp and Signal.encryption apps.
A retired judge, Barbara Jones, is overseeing a review of the material to determine which parts are covered by attorney-client privilege. She's expected to soon file a final update on that process.
In her first update on the review, Jones revealed that only a tiny fraction of Cohen's material was privileged.
Wood set Friday as a deadline for the special protocol in which Jones acts as a "special master." The remainder of material will be reviewed by a "taint team" of prosecutors who review the documents for privilege before passing them to a separate team conducting the investigation.
Prosecutors wrote that the shredded documents, encrypted messages and 315 megabytes of data from a Blackberry phone will be reviewed by June 25. Prosecutors did not yet have a timeline for the review of data on a second Blackberry.
