Just out of a hearing in the NY Parnas & Fruman case. The gist was that the team for Fruman (who is not complying w the congressional subpoena for impeachment) is pissed that Parnas handed over A LOT of info to Congress without screening for Fruman’s attorney-client privilege.
The issues at hand were pretty technical, but there was a lot of tension between Fruman & Parnas’ lawyers. Also, Parnas’ lawyer randomly brought up that’s thinks AG Barr should recuse himself from the US V. Parnas case. No one else in the court wanted to touch that w a 10 ft pole
Neither Parnas nor Fruman were there, just the lawyers. They have another hearing scheduled for Monday and when the judge asked all the lawyers if their clients wanted to show up, everyone said no except Parnas’ who said “You couldn’t keep him away.” Everyone laughed.
Parnas has handed over three devices to Congress so far: an iPhone 11, a samsung phone (unclear on if its a galaxy), and the contents of the iCloud, which many people in court seemed confused about. ...
Despite wanting to give this info over, Parnas hasn't provided the passwords to any of his devices to the government, so they've been working with the FBI to "crack them open," as US attorney said, and have provided all the info they can to Parnas so he can hand it to Congress
The whole hearing today seemed to have been called because of a misunderstanding about how iCloud works. Bondy, Parnas' lawyer, asked the gov to provide iCloud info to them like they did the phone info, but the gov was like...
... 'No, if you have the iCloud password you can do that yourself, we're not gonna do the work for you.' Bondy, in court, said they spoke to some of the "younger people in the office" who explained how to access Parnas' iCloud data to provide to Congress.
So the hearing started with everyone being like, 'Haha nvm sorry for the confusion we withdraw the request.' But Fruman's lawyer, Todd Blanche, took the opportunity to take up an issue w Parnas complying w Congress' subpoena. ...
Fruman's lawyer requested that the Judge order Parnas' team to ask for the info from Congress back so they could remove all the info in Parnas' phone that would be subject to Fruman's attorney-client privilege. ...
Fruman and Parnas had a lot of lawyers together for other situations (like being investigated by the FEC, or using Giuliani as their attorny), and there is info in Parnas' phones about that. Parnas waived his attorney-client privilege, but Fruman did not. So he was pissed.
At first the Judge seemed to want to dismiss Fruman's problem, saying that it was a lot to ask Congress to give back that info now, or to sort through it, that they're busy and on a deadline, and that they probably wouldn't care about the content subject to that privilege anyway
But the US attorney sympathized with Fruman's lawyer (which was surprising!), saying that they were concerned that if the House publicly released info that was not admissible in court because it was privileged, then it could potentially taint witnesses & jurors.
After some back and forth, some circular logic, and a raised, exasperated voice coming from Fruman's team, everyone seemed to come to an agreement that Bondy would give the House Intelligence Committee a list of lawyer/law firm names to look out for as they go through the info...
... and request that before Congress publicly releases any info pertaining to those names they bring them to Parnas' legal team's attention. Everyone seemed pretty satisfied with this.
The hearing brought up some nerdy/interesting legal Qs about whether Congress is subject to attorney-client privilege in their investigations, particularly when it pertains to impeachment, or whether Congress is above "common-law privilege." Judge Oetken said it was a gray area.
And that's that! Will be back Monday when they chat about discovery (might be interesting?) and set a date for the trial (will not be interesting. It's just a bunch of dudes talking schedule conflicts). Have a good weekend nerds!
(just as an aside, I think it is worth noting that Parnas' lawyer, Joseph Bondy, has some very good glasses.) 
