Barbara Underwood is applauded at the state Legislature after her appointment as New York's 66th Attorney General. Photo Credit: Attorney General's Office.

Tuesday's revelation that a business associate of Michael Cohen, Evgeny Freidman, pleaded guilty to millions in tax evasion from his taxi medallion business appeared to add another chapter in the ongoing litigation saga for Cohen.

As part of Freidman's plea agreement, the so-called “taxi king” agreed to cooperate as a potential government witness.

But none of that was detailed in the announcement of the plea by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood's office, which actually prosecuted the case against Freidman. Yet it's another example of the office's continued presence percolating up into varied areas of legal concern involving persons associated with President Donald Trump, including issues directly related to the president.

The AG Office's prosecution of Freidman has been public knowledge since his arrest in 2017. The AG's dealings with many of the fixtures in the Trump universe have also been going on for some time, long before the public was struggling to pronounce special counsel Robert Mueller's last name correctly. Those brushes with the president's orbit, before and after his election, earned Eric Schneiderman substantial attention, until his sudden resignation earlier this month. The office's announcement of Freidman's plea, the same day Underwood was selected as the interim attorney general, signals the office continues its pursuits unabated.

“As Attorney General Underwood made clear from day one, the 1,600 professionals in our office are as focused and determined as ever and committed to pursuing their vital work on behalf of New Yorkers,” Eric Soufer, director of communications and senior counsel to the AG, said in a statement.

Archer, Byington, Glennon & Levine of counsel James Versocki spent the better part of eight years in the office, beginning in 1998, all in the Labor Division. He worked under three separate AGs, with the bulk of his time under Eliot Spitzer. He acknowledged that the person in charge sets the tone and tenor for the office, but said the “backbone” is the career individuals invested in the office's culture of professionalism that goes back decades.

“A lot of my contemporaries have stayed there, and made their careers there,” he said.

Versocki called Underwood's selection by the Legislature “an incredible choice,” and said that her remaining as interim attorney general “just confirms you're going to have continuity in that office until the election” later this year. Those in Trump's orbit facing action or probes from the AG's Office “should not think that's going to change any time soon,” he said.

The situation with Freidman, and its overlap with Cohen, appears to be something of an outlier in the AG's interactions with Trump and his associates. The attorney general's long-running investigation was separate from any issues with Cohen. The plea agreement Freidman entered in to cooperate with local and federal authorities was partly a product of the merging of interests once federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York became interested in Cohen and his associates.

For other people in Trump's orbit, the interest in the AG's Office is more direct.

In March, The Associated Press reported the family real estate company Trump son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner ran up until joining the White House had illegally removed hundreds of rent-regulated apartments in New York City from buildings in their control. While Kushner himself was said to have not personally signed off on the paperwork that obscured the company's actions, he was the CEO during the time period.

Shortly thereafter reports surfaced that the AG's Office was meeting with tenant representatives about the allegations. A month later, news broke that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York had subpoenaed the company over the reports.

The office has also worked directly with Mueller's investigation into possible collusion between Trump's presidential campaign and Russia. New York state prosecutors worked with Mueller's federal team in its investigation into Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort. Reports at the time noted that the move was, intentionally or not, would, if state laws could be brought, provide a backstop should Trump ever use his pardon ability to spring Manafort or others.

The AG's Office has purposefully looked to cut that option off for anyone under their jurisdiction. In a letter to lawmakers, the then-AG asked for help closing a legislative loophole that could bar the state from being charges under certain quirks of state law. The motive was clear enough: New York needs to have the clear power to take on the president if federal investigations and prosecutions are short circuited.

The office has shown it's more than willing to go toe-to-toe with Trump, both before he became president and after. In the run-up to the election, the office pursued claims against Trump's now-defunct Trump University project, which prosecutors alleged was operated fraudulently. Just after the election, the suit against Trump was settled for $25 million.

A month before the election, after reports circulated about potential misuse of funds at Trump's philanthropic organization, the AG's Office ordered the Trump Organization to stop all solicitations in New York, after finding it failed to properly register with the state charities bureau. That same foundation is now reportedly under investigation by Mueller for a $150,000 donation made by a Ukrainian oligarch during the campaign.

Then there are, of course, the numerous legal actions the office has taken against the Trump administration to challenge its policy stances. The AG's Office sued over the federal U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over an attempt to delay fuel efficiency standards. In April a federal court order blocked the administration's delay of the previously established standards. The state has sued the federal government over an attempt to include a citizenship question on the 2020 U.S. census, attempts at allegedly undermining Obamacare, and to keep the drawdown of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program from being implemented.

On Thursday, the forward momentum appeared to continue. Underwood announced the elevation of Wanda Perez-Maldonado as the new chief of the office's Special Investigations and Prosecutions Unit. She'd previously served as senior prosecutor in the unit, until her departure in 2016 to join the Bronx District Attorney's Office as chief of the public integrity unit there.

In a statement, Underwood called Perez-Maldonado a “deeply experienced and meticulous prosecutor,” adding she was happy the office was seeing the return of one of its own.