Wood was not warm to Trump’s side, saying she’s open to the taint team or a special master. Both Cohen’s attorneys and federal prosecutors have submitted a list of possible special masters. Observers told Business Insider that the judge is more likely to select one of the government’s nominees, which are all retired judges from the Southern District of New York. Cohen’s team submitted a group of former federal prosecutors.

But the daylight between Trump and Cohen on this issue struck some as “bizarre.”

“It’s not bizarre that Cohen is asking for one, it’s not bizarre that the US attorney’s office is opposing one and saying it’s happened under special circumstances and those circumstances aren’t here, the thing that Trump’s attorney said he wanted is literally unprecedented and that’s the only thing they’re asking for,” Mitchell Epner, a former assistant US attorney for the District of New Jersey and an attorney at Rottenberg Lipman Rich, told Business Insider. “They’re saying either give us that, or we’re not taking a position on any of the other things. We think they are all bad.”