New York, Jan 4 – The legal drama surrounding former U.S. President Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial took an unexpected turn as Michael Cohen’s attorney, David Schwartz, petitioned a Manhattan federal judge to refrain from imposing sanctions. The plea stems from court documents that, unbeknownst to Schwartz, featured fictitious case references generated by an artificial intelligence program.
Expressing regret before U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman, Schwartz acknowledged the inclusion of fake citations and assumed responsibility for the oversight. Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, clarified that he inadvertently produced the spurious cases using the AI tool Google Bard, later providing them to Schwartz.
In his defense, Schwartz admitted to relying excessively on Cohen and not directly engaging with co-counsel E. Dayna Perry. He claimed that, at the time of citing the cases, he reasonably believed Perry, not Cohen, had conducted the relevant research.
Cohen, a key witness in an impending criminal trial against Trump, affirmed last week that he was unaware the generated citations were fabricated. These spurious references were integral to court papers supporting Cohen’s effort to terminate his supervised release following imprisonment for campaign finance violations.
Schwartz’s legal team argued that Cohen served as a conduit for document exchange between Schwartz and Perry, resulting in crucial oversights, particularly regarding the origins of the fake case citations.
Perry, in a previous filing, contended that Schwartz had no grounds to assume she was the source of the fabricated cases, suggesting a pattern of inattentiveness to detail on Schwartz’s part.
In response, Schwartz, represented by retired New York state judges Barry Kamins and John Leventhal, refrained from engaging in personal back-and-forths and opted not to respond to Perry’s remarks.
As the legal tussle unfolds, Cohen, a recent witness in the civil fraud case led by New York State Attorney General Letitia James against Trump, is poised to testify in the state’s criminal case. This separate lawsuit alleges Trump falsified business records to conceal reimbursements to Cohen for a $130,000 payment made to silence adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
In an unrelated incident, two New York lawyers faced sanctions in June for submitting a legal brief containing six fabricated case citations generated by the ChatGPT artificial intelligence system.
