A federal judge on Wednesday refused to sanction Michael Cohen and his lawyers for filing fraudulent case citations generated by artificial intelligence (AI), but called the case “embarrassing and clearly negligent.” did.
Mr. Cohen, former President Donald Trump's former fixer who has pleaded guilty to income tax evasion and other charges, submitted a false statement to his lawyer as he prepares a new effort to get Mr. Cohen released early from supervised release. Was.
In a 13-page decision issued Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Jesse Fuhrman rejected Cohen's fourth attempt at a motion, but the judge also cited false citations against Cohen and his attorney David Schwartz. He refused to impose sanctions on him.
“The court has no basis to question Cohen's representation that he believed the incident to be genuine,” Fuhrman wrote. “Indeed, it would have been completely unreasonable for him to submit a bogus case to Schwartz and include it in his motion, knowing that Schwartz was a fake.” (which he should have done), or if he fails to do so, the problem could be discovered by the government or the courts, with serious negative consequences for Cohen himself. ”
Mr. Cohen's use of AI is a surprising turn in his criminal case, but it follows a spate of lawyers being arrested for using such software to provide false case citations. Last June, a judge sanctioned two lawyers who admitted to using the AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT to create fake case citations. Cohen said he was using Google's Gemini, formerly known as Bard.
Two days after Mr. Cohen acknowledged the use of AI, Chief Justice John Roberts made AI the focus of his latest annual report, asking the judiciary to determine its appropriate use in the legal system.
The recent motion to shorten Mr. Cohen's supervised release deadline was prompted in large part by Mr. Cohen's testimony at Mr. Trump's Manhattan civil fraud trial. At the time, the former president's former fixer testified that Cohen and another Trump Organization executive intended to “reverse engineer” Trump's assets to arrive at the numbers Trump demanded. I liked it.
But Fuhrman, like prosecutors, said Cohen's testimony at trial actually “provides a reason to dismiss his motion, not a reason to dismiss it.” [to] Please give it to me. ”
During Cohen's cross-examination in October, Trump's lawyer Alina Haba questioned the former fixer about the veracity of his past and present testimony. She pointed to testimony in which he denied innocence of the crimes he was convicted of, accusing her of violating his oath to testify truthfully when he gave his plea or on the stand that day.
“You committed perjury in the process, didn't you?” Hubba asked. “Did you lie to the judge?” [William] Paulie, did you say you were guilty?
“Yes,” Cohen replied.
Fuhrman said it was “perverse” to cite Cohen's testimony in the fraud trial as evidence of the disbarred lawyer's “determination to uphold the law” and that Cohen's contradictory testimony constituted perjury. He said it must be.
“At a minimum, Mr. Cohen's continued and escalating efforts to extricate himself from past admissions of criminal responsibility are clear evidence of the continued need for tangible deterrence,” Fuhrman said. he wrote.
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