A federal judge on Friday granted Michael Cohen’s request for a delay in a lawsuit brought against him by porn star Stormy Daniels, saying it appeared likely Cohen will be indicted in a related criminal investigation. 
 
 Judge S. James Otero’s order for a 90-day stay comes two days after Cohen, President Trump’s personal attorney, said he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself in the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California. Cohen’s declaration cited the investigation by federal prosecutors in New York, who are examining his role in quashing embarrassing stories about Trump during the 2016 campaign, according to a person familiar with the matter. 
 
 Otero said Friday that the issues in the civil dispute with Daniels overlap with the criminal probe into Cohen. The lawyer’s Manhattan office and home were raided on April 9. 
 
 “This is no simple criminal investigation; it is an investigation into the personal attorney of a sitting President regarding documents that might be subject to the attorney client privilege,” Otero wrote. “Whether or not an indictment is forthcoming, and the Court thinks it likely based on these facts alone, these unique circumstances counsel in favor of stay.” 
 
 Daniels’s attorney, Michael Avenatti, said he planned to file an appeal early next week. 
 
 “While we certainly respect Judge Otero’s 90-day stay order based on Mr. Cohen’s pleading of the 5th, we do not agree with it,” he wrote on Twitter. 
 
 Cohen’s attorney, Brent Blakely, did not respond to a message seeking comment. 
 
 Daniels, who says she had an affair with Trump more than a decade ago, is seeking to void a deal she reached with Cohen days before the election under which she was paid $130,000 in exchange for her silence. Cohen has said he “facilitated” the payment using his own money from a home-equity line of credit. 
 
 Trump, who previously denied knowing anything about the $130,000 arranged by Cohen, acknowledged Cohen’s efforts on Thursday for the first time. 
 
 “Michael represents me, like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, he represented me,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “And from what I’ve seen, he did absolutely nothing wrong. There were no campaign funds going into this.” 
 
 Daniels’s suit, filed last month, named the president and Essential Consultants, a limited liability company Cohen created as a vehicle for the payment, as defendants. Daniels later added Cohen as a defendant. 
 
 It is not uncommon for defendants facing both civil liability and criminal prosecution to request a pause in civil proceedings to avoid giving sworn testimony and producing documents that could prove incriminating. ||||| Judge Delays Stormy Daniels' Lawsuit Against Trump, Lawyer Michael Cohen 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Mary Altaffer/AP Mary Altaffer/AP 
 
 A federal judge in Los Angeles says the Stormy Daniels civil lawsuit against President Trump and his attorney Michael Cohen will take a 90-day break while events play out in a criminal investigation in New York. 
 
 As we have reported, Cohen has said he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the Daniels lawsuit because of the related criminal inquiry in New York. FBI agents working on that probe raided Cohen's home and office looking for documents related to the Daniels nondisclosure agreement. 
 
 Cohen had worked out a deal with Daniels that kept her from talking about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006. She signed the agreement with Cohen just before the 2016 election, and Cohen says he paid her $130,000 to stay quiet. Now she wants the court to invalidate that arrangement. 
 
 Judge James Otero finds that a lot of the same facts are potentially at issue in both the civil suit in his court and the criminal one in New York, which "would heavily implicate Mr Cohen's Fifth Amendment rights." 
 
 Cohen's attorney had argued that answering questions in the Daniels case would reduce Cohen's ability to defend himself in the other court. 
 
 In New York, Judge Kimba Wood refused to let Trump's attorneys review Cohen's seized documents to see if they should be returned because they are secret under attorney-client privilege. Wood appointed a "special master" to review which of material will be available to prosecutors, and which will be withheld. 
 
 Earlier this week Trump, who previously had denied knowing about his attorney's payoff to Daniels, acknowledged that Cohen did represent him in the deal. ||||| A federal judge in California on Friday ordered a three-month delay in the lawsuit brought by the pornographic film star Stephanie Clifford against President Trump, citing what he called the likelihood that Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, will be indicted. 
 
 In granting a defense request for the postponement, the judge, S. James Otero of United States District Court in Los Angeles, sided with the president’s legal team that the unusual circumstances of the case warranted the stay of action. Judge Otero acknowledged in his order that complications might arise from an overlap with a criminal investigation into Mr. Cohen. 
 
 “This is no simple criminal investigation,” Judge Otero wrote. “It is an investigation into the personal attorney of a sitting president regarding documents that might be subject to the attorney-client privilege. Whether or not an indictment is forthcoming, and the court thinks it likely based on these facts alone, these unique circumstances counsel in favor of stay.” 
 
 On Wednesday, Mr. Cohen, whose New York office, apartment and hotel room were raided this month by the F.B.I., invoked his Fifth Amendment rights in Ms. Clifford’s lawsuit, citing the “ongoing criminal investigation” in New York. ||||| Stormy Daniels’s attorney, Michael Avenatti, said on Wednesday that the decision by Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights in Daniels’s lawsuit against him was “stunning.” 
 
 “This is a stunning development. Never before in our nation’s history has the attorney for the sitting President invoked the 5th Amend in connection with issues surrounding the President,” Avenatti wrote on Twitter. 
 
 This is a stunning development. Never before in our nation’s history has the attorney for the sitting President invoked the 5th Amend in connection with issues surrounding the President. It is esp. stunning seeing as MC served as the “fixer” for Mr. Trump for over 10 yrs. #basta — Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) April 25, 2018 
 
 Avenatti, who earlier this month predicted that Cohen would plead the Fifth, said Cohen’s action was especially stunning given that he had served as the president’s “fixer” for more than 10 years. 
 
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 “Based on the advice of counsel, I will assert my 5th amendment rights in connection with all proceedings in this case due to the ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York,” Cohen said in a court filing Wednesday. 
 
 Cohen said he decided to plead the Fifth based on the FBI raid of his office and hotel room earlier this month and the criminal probe the raid was a part of. 
 
 During the 2016 presidential election, Trump said pleading the Fifth Amendment was a sign that someone wasn't innocent. 
 
 Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, is suing Cohen for defamation over his suggestion that Daniels lied about her alleged affair with Trump. 
 
 Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement weeks before the election that, Daniels says, was meant to silence her about the reported affair.
– When you've got a civil matter overlapping with a criminal one, you may need to prioritize which fire to deal with first. A federal judge agrees in the case of Michael Cohen, approving on Friday a 90-day stay in the civil lawsuit against him and President Trump by Stephanie Clifford (aka porn star Stormy Daniels), the Washington Post reports. The reasoning: Trump's personal lawyer filed a declaration this week noting he intends to plead the Fifth in the Daniels case, as he fears answering questions in that matter could potentially implicate himself in the criminal probe against him in New York, per NPR. FBI agents working on the latter investigation carried out a raid on Cohen's home and office in early April, and because part of that mission was to seek documents related to Daniels' nondisclosure agreement, there may be "large potential factual overlap" with Daniels' civil case, per Otero. "This is no simple criminal investigation," Otero noted Friday. "Whether or not an indictment is forthcoming, and the Court thinks it likely based on these facts alone, these unique circumstances counsel in favor of stay." Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti, responded to Otero's ruling on Twitter, tweeting: "While we certainly respect Judge Otero's 90 day stay order based on Mr. Cohen's pleading of the 5th, we do not agree with it. We will likely be filing an immediate appeal to the Ninth Circuit early next week. Justice delayed is justice denied." He added to the New York Times that "we want to get the truth to the American people as quickly as possible." The Post, however, notes it's not unusual for those facing both civil and criminal issues to do exactly what Cohen's doing to avoid incrimination. The next hearing for the civil case has been set for July 27.