Michael Cohen’s troubles keep coming. In the long legal saga over his connection to the hush money payments from Donald Trump to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, Cohen’s lawyer filed a motion to end his supervised release early, Politico reports. In it, Cohen’s lawyer, David Schwartz, cites three federal court decisions as a rationale for the move. The problem? Those cases aren’t real. “As far as the Court can tell, none of these cases exist,” U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman wrote Tuesday, asking Schwartz to provide evidence the cases exist by next Tuesday or face sanctions. That might be a hard task, given that, when contacted, an appeals court found “no record of any of the three decisions,” wrote Furman.
The cases, regardless of how and why they were cited, amount to further headaches for the 57-year-old Cohen — who at one point earlier this year was considering a run for Congress in the Manhattan-based seat currently held by Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Democrat. The current case began in 2018, when Cohen admitted in court that Trump had directed him to coordinate payments to two women in exchange for their staying silent about interactions with Trump during his first presidential campaign. Then came a conviction for Cohen, a shortened prison sentence after the outbreak of COVID and a vow to help take down his former boss. He has been out on supervised release since November 2021 — which his legal team is now working to end. Schwartz has been working with Cohen as spokesperson and counsel since the early days of the legal battle.