WASHINGTON: A US judge is asking the Obama administration to protect from public disclosure federal court records involving the once-secret criminal history of a former Donald Trump business partner.

US District Judge Brian Cogan in New York says that unless the Justice Department acts before April 18, he'll decide whether to make public thousands of pages of the court files under the assumption that federal prosecutors don't care.

The case involves Felix Sater (SAY-terr). He's a Trump business associate who had pleaded guilty in a major Mafia- linked stock fraud scheme in the 1990s and cooperated with government prosecutors.

The Associated Press reported in December that, even after learning about Sater's background, Trump tapped Sater for a business development role in 2010 that included the title of senior adviser to Trump.

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