On the bench for the Cohen case: 'the judicial equivalent of Teddy Roosevelt'

Keeping with the theme of a liberal cabal, the Washington Times mentioned that another progressive bigwig — Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader — was also at the festivities. Joining the attacks, Fox News and NRA TV soon chimed in.

Given its explosive mix of money, sex and presidential politics, the case engulfing Cohen — an investigation into whether he broke the law by suppressing scandals about women who claimed they had affairs with Trump — was almost certain to provoke a pushback and present a challenge to any judge called upon to manage it.

But the Cohen affair is not Wood’s first turn in the political spotlight. In 1993, after five years on the bench, she was considered for U.S. attorney general by President Bill Clinton after an earlier nominee, Zoe Baird, was found to have hired undocumented immigrants as nannies and failed to pay their taxes. But Wood was asked to withdraw her name after telling White House screeners that she was sponsoring her own nanny for a green card — which was legal then — and that she had paid all the necessary taxes.

“I have fulfilled every legal requirement with respect to the employment of our baby sitter,” she said in a statement at the time. “Nevertheless, and after further consultations, I have concluded that in the current political environment, proceeding further with the possibility of my nomination would be inappropriate.”

Although she had done nothing illegal, Wood, 74, was a casualty of politics and continued on the bench at U.S. District Court in Manhattan, one of the country’s highest-profile judicial stages.

Over the years, she has handled several prominent cases, earning a reputation for being sensitive, demanding and — as could be relevant in Cohen’s matter — unequivocal in her expectations of public officials.

“She’s sort of the judicial equivalent of Teddy Roosevelt — she speaks softly but carries a big stick,” said Judd Burstein, a lawyer who has known Wood for more than 30 years. “She has a wonderful judicial temperament. She’s very soft-spoken, very courteous to people, but completely no-nonsense.”

In 2010, Wood presided over the guilty pleas of 10 Russian spies who had worked as long-term sleeper agents — a case that inspired the TV show “The Americans.” Six years later, when she sentenced Dean G. Skelos, the former Republican leader of New York’s state Senate, to five years in prison on corruption charges, she admonished him for ignoring his “moral compass.”

“Through your crimes,” she said, “you have caused immeasurable damage to New Yorkers’ confidence in the integrity of their government.”

(Skelos’ conviction was later overturned on appeal after the Supreme Court narrowed the legal definition of corruption. He is scheduled to be retried in June, again before Wood.)

The Cohen case more or less landed in her lap. In a bit of legal happenstance, Wood was the emergency duty judge last week when Cohen’s lawyers filed a motion challenging the search warrants that federal agents used to seize his cellphones, papers and computers in a series of extraordinary raids this month. It remains unclear if Wood will continue to preside as the matter moves forward. If criminal charges are brought, the case would be randomly reassigned.

But at least so far, Wood has shown herself to be a firm jurist in the proceeding. On Monday, she compelled Cohen’s lawyers to reveal that Hannity had once been one of Cohen’s clients. Engaging her in a game of cat-and-mouse, the lawyers had at first described Hannity merely as a “prominent individual” who was embarrassed to be connected to the Cohen investigation.

But after another lawyer — representing news media outlets — stepped in to argue that embarrassment was not sufficient grounds to keep the name a secret, Wood decided she agreed. When Cohen’s lawyers pushed back, Wood was blunt.

“I’m directing you to disclose the name now,” she said.

And so the lawyer did.

Although the moment passed with a burst of audible gasps, Wood’s measured approach — not raising her voice but not backing down — showed a side of her that lawyers in her court know well.

“What’s relevant to this case is that she’s so calm and levelheaded,” said Robert B. Fiske Jr., a former U.S. attorney in Manhattan who has known Wood since the 1980s. “Both sides, I think, would be very happy to have her as the judge. She has the ability to come into a high-pressure situation and deal with it intelligently and fairly.”

Born in Port Townsend, Washington, in 1944 to a military family, Wood spent her early years following her father, a career Army officer, through different posts in Europe. She studied for a time at the Sorbonne in Paris before attending Connecticut College and then Harvard Law School, graduating in 1969.

Between college and law school, Wood got a master’s degree from the London School of Economics while also briefly training, as something of a lark, to become a Playboy bunny. By 1971, she had embarked on what became a high-powered legal career, working briefly at the federal Office of Economic Opportunity and then taking a post at the New York law firm LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae, where she was among the first women to work on antitrust matters.

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, appointed Wood, a Democrat, to the federal bench in New York with the support of another Republican power broker, former Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato. At that point, Wood had little experience with criminal law and had never tried a case in front of a jury, but at her confirmation hearings D’Amato praised her for her “extraordinary background as a legal scholar.”

In 1990, in one of her first important cases, Wood sentenced onetime junk-bond king Michael Milken to 10 years in prison for, among other crimes, violating federal securities laws. At the time, she said that she was issuing the severe prison term to send a message to the financial community and also because Milken had chosen to break the law despite his good fortune and intelligence.

In her sentencing decision, Wood said that she received several letters from the public asking her to punish Milken for the “alleged abuses of the 1980s” — the savings-and-loan crisis, the takeover craze and the rampant use of junk bonds. She said that while she sympathized “with the anxiety expressed in these letters,” Milken should only be held accountable for his own offenses. “Our system of justice,” she went on, “protects everyone from being sentenced on supposition.”

Two years later, though, after Milken had cooperated with federal prosecutors against his Wall Street colleagues, Wood followed the urgings of both sides in the case and reduced his sentence so that he only served about two years. “If society did not reward cooperation by the worst criminals (who often know most about high-level criminal schemes),” she said this time, “many serious crimes would go undetected and/or unpunished.”

At that point, Wood was working 12-to-14-hour days, such long stints that she gave up one of her hobbies, painting abstract canvases in oil. To relax, her family said, she played tennis and grew roses at a vacation home in Massachusetts. Her first marriage, to journalist Michael Kramer, ended in divorce. She is now married to Frank E. Richardson, a wealthy financier who once sat on the board of Soros’ Quantum Industrial Holdings.

Although Wood declined to comment on the case, a spokesman for the court, Edward Friedland, said in a statement issued Wednesday: “From time to time, but rarely, Judge Wood and her husband came across George Soros at large social gatherings that had nothing to do with politics. When he asked Judge Wood to perform his wedding, she did so.”

Friedland added that Wood has performed more than 40 marriage ceremonies during her time as a judge.

But even if Wood moves in rarefied circles, she still maintains an exacting demeanor in the courtroom, lawyers said.

“She is very kind and sensitive, but she doesn’t suffer fools lightly,” said Gerald L. Shargel, a veteran defense lawyer who has appeared before Wood on numerous occasions. “She’s always been very gracious in my experience, but anyone who thinks she’s going to be a walk in the park, they’re going to be sadly mistaken.”

In 2010, for instance, Bennett Epstein, a lawyer who had a trial before Wood, sent her a letter requesting permission to delay the proceeding so that he could attend the circumcision of his daughter’s child in Philadelphia — if, indeed, it was a boy. “Should the child be a girl,” Epstein wrote, “not much will happen in the way of public celebration. Some may even be disappointed.”

In a flourish of pointed generosity, Wood permitted the delay but added a handwritten note to the bottom of Epstein’s missive.

“If a daughter is born,” she wrote, “there will be a public celebration in court, with readings from poetry celebrating girls and women.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

On the bench for the Cohen case: 'the judicial equivalent of Teddy Roosevelt'

InfoWars, the conspiracy theory website run by Alex Jones, posted an article that distilled Wood’s 30-year career to a single Saturday five years ago when she performed the wedding of left-wing billionaire George Soros.

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