Oh My: Michael Cohen Gets Nailed for Legal Filings With Fake AI Citations

This is certainly the "yikes" story of the day.

We see a lot more things being written by AI. But one of the things that you really shouldn't be writing with AI is legal filings.

But it turns out that Michael Cohen, the lawyer they're hoping to use against former President Donald Trump in the criminal case in Manhattan, was caught using AI for citations that he gave his attorney that were then used in a motion filed with a federal judge.

A few weeks back, a federal judge noticed attorneys for Michael Cohen were using fake cases - and demanded an explanation.

It turns out Cohen was using AI to help write his own motions - and was apparently misleading his lawyer about the source of those cases. pic.twitter.com/yGyX6N8VHC
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) December 29, 2023

Cohen said it was a mistake — that he didn't understand how to use Google Bard, which generated the false citations.

The fictitious citations were then used in a motion provided to a Manhattan federal judge. Mr. Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations and served time in prison, had asked for an early end to court supervision of his case now that he was out of prison and had complied with the conditions of his release.

In a sworn declaration made public on Friday, Mr. Cohen explained that he had not kept up with “emerging trends (and related risks) in legal technology and did not realize that Google Bard was a generative text service that, like ChatGPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not.”He also said he did not realize that the lawyer filing the motion on his behalf, David M. Schwartz, “would drop the cases into his submission wholesale without even confirming that they existed.”

This all came out because the judge in the case couldn't find three of the cases cited and ordered on Dec. 12 that Schwartz produce the cases and, if he couldn't, explain how non-existent cases got in his filings along with Cohen's role in them. The judge also asked Schwartz why he should not be sanctioned for made-up cases in his filing.

Schwartz's response is funny, too.

In his own letter to the court, Cohen's attorney David M. Schwartz said he believed the legal citations came from a different attorney for Cohen, Danya Perry.
"If I had believed that Mr. Cohen had found these cases, I would have researched them. It was my belief, however, that Mr. Cohen had sent me cases found by Ms. Perry," Schwartz said.

Read that again. It's hilarious. He didn't check because he thought it was from Perry. But if he knew it was from Cohen, he would have checked. In other words, he wouldn't have trusted Cohen. Not exactly a helpful comment there, but now Schwartz is on the hook for all this mess.

The judge has given them until Jan. 3 to submit any comments before he makes decisions about sanctions and if Cohen deserves early termination of supervised release.

This is a pretty ridiculous mess. But it can have a bigger impact in the cases against Trump in which they are using Cohen.

The revelation could have serious implications for the Manhattan criminal case against Mr. Trump, in which Mr. Cohen is expected to serve as the star witness. The former president’s lawyers have long attacked Mr. Cohen as a serial fabulist; now, they will have a brand-new example.

This is also funny since the left has adopted him as some kind of truth-teller in an effort to get Trump and featured him on MSNBC.

That didn't turn out very well.