Michael Cohen is in the mix again. This time, though, it’s not about his relationship with Donald Trump. Now it’s because, as we assume innocently, Cohen employed Google Bard, a ChatGPT competitor (U.S. v. Michael Cohen, 18 Cr. 602 (JMF)). No longer practicing law, he was apparently unfamiliar with the flaws in this advanced technology that literally came up with non-existent case cites. The cases ostensibly supported a draft motion that he forwarded to his friend/lawyer (Lawyer 1). Cohen collected them, hopefully to be used by Lawyer 1 in a filing to support Cohen’s proposed motion to terminate his supervised release arising from his earlier criminal conviction in federal court.

Lawyer 1, apparently without carefully enough checking the cites and apparently believing that they had been successfully vetted, included them in his motion. And notably, the government’s opposition papers didn’t find the cites wanting. It simply opposed the motion on the merits.