U.S. prosecutors pull encrypted messages from phones seized in Cohen raids

[DonViejo]

Source: Reuters


JUNE 15, 2018 / 4:30 PM / UPDATED 38 MINUTES AGO

Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors investigating U.S. President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen have extracted more than 700 pages of messages sent using encrypted programs like WhatsApp and Signal on phones seized from Cohen, according to a court filing on Friday.

The prosecutors also said they had reconstructed 16 pages from the contents of a shredding machine taken during raids on Cohen’s home, office and hotel room in April. The prosecutors said in their filing in Manhattan federal court that they had turned the materials over to Cohen’s lawyers, who are expected to review them by June 25.

Prosecutors are investigating Cohen for possible crimes related to his business dealings. The probe stems in part from a referral by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether there was any coordination between associates of Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Trump has repeatedly said there was no collusion, and Russia has denied interference.

Cohen has not been criminally charged, but a source familiar with the investigation told Reuters in April that the federal prosecutors are investigating him for possible bank and tax fraud, and for possible campaign law violations connected with a payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and matters concerning foreign support of Trump’s campaign.



Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-cohen/u-s-prosecutors-pull-encrypted-messages-from-phones-seized-in-cohen-raids-idUSKBN1JB2V3

[lagomorph777]

1. Decrypting, unshredding, sorting, a ton of trouble in those millions of records...

So many will go to jail thanks to Cohen. Maybe one day we'll celebrate Cohen Day the way we commemorate D-Day.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. We'll have have to have a week for all the names.

Manafort Day, Stone, etc. And teh high holy days for the DON and his family.

[lagomorph777]

5. Trump month

In commemoration of the man who ended the Republican Party.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

2. He's shitting bricks

Why bother to encrypt if it's not super sensitive? oh boy. Tough guy...going down.

[Kali]

6. I'm not defending these assclowns in any way...

but privacy rights have been so eroded that everybody should be concerned and using whatever reasonable means are available to preserve them.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

7. I completely agree,

We have foreign espionage and treason here. Kind of the top of the rung crimes. I hear you though.

[getagrip_already]

9. cohen is as dumb as a brick, but it is a good idea to encrypt and shred lots of inane stuff along

with the ultra sensitive.

Look at it this way, if you break into a house and find a safe, you can be fairly sure there will be valuables in there. But if you find 500 safes, and it takes a long time to open each one, and the first 5 have socks and dishes in them, well, it's going to be a long, frustrating search. In the end, that might be all you find because the prizes were hidden elsewhere.

That's why you don't just encrypt and shred the important stuff. Do it to everything and let them reassemble 100 bags of randomly shredded stuff.

Give them 5 TB of randomly encrypted docs, not 100 MB.

You also have a defense strategy. "Why did you encrypt these documents?" - "I encrypt everything. I wasn't trying to hide those documents speciiifically, everything is equally important.".

[SkatmanRoth]

3. I hope Sean Hannity's name appears repeatedly

I would celebrate if Hannity went into the vortex along with Manafort and Trump.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

8. Do the feds now have copies of encrypted messages, ..

... or have they actually decrypted the messages? The article didn't seem clear on the issue.