By Jeffrey A. Newman, Esq. MBA
June 23, 2026
There is an interesting bit of news today concerning AI and search warrants. U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield in Manhattan has lifted a temporary block on a search warrant issued by the United States. It involves a business executive, Richard Kim, charged with securities fraud, and the search warrant is seeking data from ChatGPT maker OpenAI. Kim was charged last August with defrauding investors in his crypto company Zero Edge.
Prosecutors say Kim’s accounts at the AI company and at a rival platform likely contain evidence of his alleged scheme to defraud investors of Zero Edge over how their funds would be used. This dispute is similar to a decision by another federal judge, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan, who ruled in February in an unrelated criminal case that the prosecution could obtain records from Anthropic’s chatbot Claude and that such exchanges were not protected by attorney-client privilege.
Kim’s lawyers argued that the AI communications should not be allowed because they might surface attorney-client communications. However, the prosecutors said that Kim’s communications with AI platforms are not privileged because chatbots are not lawyers, users cannot reasonably expect confidentiality with chatbots, and such tools do not provide legal advice. The case is United States v. Richard Kim, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 1:25-cr-00359-LGS.
To be sure there will be many more legal battles over AI communications and more.
Jeffrey Newman, JD, MBA, a former prosecutor, is a lawyer whose firm represents whistleblowers. Jeff@Jeffnewmanlaw.com
