1/ In a new legal filing tonight, President Trump's lawyers argue that they should be able to review Michael Cohen's computers to separate out files that they think are covered by the attorney/client privilege so the government doesn't see them. drive.google.com/file/d/1mqr11-…
2/ Cohen made a similar argument last week, and Trump has now intervened. I'm not aware of a client ever being able to conduct the first review of whether a lawyer's files are privileged. And for an obvious reason: If the files sought involve an alleged crime/fraud, the client
3/ will say that those e-mails are privileged. Trump in effect wants the warrant to be executed like a subpoena to him personally, in which he gets to decide what the government sees. But that's not how it's done: the point of using a search warrant is to block that. Trump's
4/ argument is that as the client, he is uniquely situated to understand the documents and uniquely incentivized to respect the A/C privilege. But the law's goal here is to have a neutral assessment of what is privileged, not an incentivized one. Trump also relies on the Martha
5/ Stewart case, in which (as he notes on p3) the defendant was given a copy of the the files so she could also review the docs for privilege. But at least as I read the Stewart case, in that case the court appointed a neutral special master to review the materials, with both
6/ the govt and defense getting a copy so they could make objections to the special master's recommendations that were then reviewed de novo (without deference) by the trial judge. That's not the defense doing the review; that's both sides getting to weigh in on the special
7/ master's recommendations, and ultimately, on what the presiding judge thinks is correct. Anyway, that's my quick sense of things. Oh, and although I long ago read the cases on reviewing files in the A/c priv context, it has been a long time, and I'm not an expert on this.
8/ Also note that Trump is not claiming that his legal team will get the last word. He proposes that his team gets the first cut, and tells the government about what has been withheld; the government can challenge Trump's designation, and the court will decide. From the brief: 
9/ I see that @renato_mariotti is tweeting a thread on the same topic now, too. At least so far (#13) we're on the same page. Renato has more and more recent experience on this than I do, so check out his thread, too, if you've read so far here.
10/ One additional thought. It is supremely weird that this filing came not from some random suspect in a random fraud case but from the President of the United States.
11/ Update: DOJ has filed its response, which you can read here (5 page .pdf) .assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4438…
