A court-appointed special master was formally announced last month to review materials the FBI seized from the home, office and hotel room of Michael Cohen, the president's longtime lawyer. | Mary Altaffer/AP Photo ‘Special master’ in Cohen raid bills $47K for first week’s work Prosecutors have about 300,000 items from searches of Trump’s lawyer and are about to get 1 million more.

A former federal judge assigned to weed through records seized last month from President Donald Trump’s personal attorney has billed more than $47,000 for her first week on the job.

Barbara Jones, a former U.S. District Court judge in Manhattan, submitted an invoice on Tuesday for work she performed beginning a couple of days before she was formally announced last month as a court-appointed special master to review materials the FBI seized from the home, office and hotel room of Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, pursuant to search warrants.


In a separate report to the court on Tuesday, Jones said that last week prosecutors received their first batch of information seized during those searches. The former judge said nearly 300,000 “items” were already turned over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which is investigating Cohen. Prosecutors are likely to get about 1 million items from three seized phones on Wednesday, Jones said.

“The 292,006 items from the first two productions that have not been designated privileged or highly personal by the parties were released to the Government on May 23rd,” Jones reported. It was not immediately clear what constitutes an “item,” but it may be a photo, video file or email message.

Jones is still working her way through 252 claims made by Cohen, Trump or the Trump Organization thus far that particular materials are privileged or “highly personal,” which she said included “medical records or similar materials.”

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Jones’ invoice tallies 68 hours of work during the last week of April at roughly $700 an hour. The invoice appears to include at least two other attorneys from her firm, Bracewell.

U.S. District Court Judge Kimba Wood announced Jones’ appointment on April 26. Wood assigned Jones to oversee the review process after lawyers for Cohen, Trump and the Trump Organization went to court to demand a role in ensuring that legally privileged attorney-client communications were not turned over to prosecutors examining Cohen’s business affairs. The investigation encompasses potential fraud charges, as well as Cohen’s role in arranging a $130,000 pre-election payment to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in an apparent bid to get her to remain silent about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier.

Under an agreement reached earlier this month, Cohen, Trump and the Trump Organization are paying half of Jones’ fees and the government is picking up the other half. Jones said no one objected to her first bill.

Jones’ firm was formerly known as Bracewell & Giuliani, until former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani left in January 2016. He is now an outside lawyer for Trump.

Wood is scheduled to hold a hearing on Wednesday on the status of the document review and the process for resolving any disagreements about which of Cohen’s record should be shared with prosecutors.

Cohen’s lawyers made another submission to the judge on Tuesday in a bid to block Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, from joining in the litigation over Cohen’s records.

The new filing relays details about a $10 million bankruptcy judgment imposed recently against Avenatti’s former law firm. Cohen’s attorneys also included a tweet in which Avenatti suggested that Cohen’s legal team was being paid by the government of Qatar. Cohen’s lawyers Stephen Ryan and Todd Harrison said they had not replied to media inquiries about the claim.

