President Donald Trump’s indignation over the FBI’s raid of his personal attorney’s office, home and hotel didn’t ease over night and spilled out on to Twitter early Tuesday morning.
After having a bit of a meltdown while speaking to reporters Monday during a meeting with the Vice President and top military and national security officials at the White House, where he called the raid “disgraceful” and a “whole new level of unfairness,” Trump tweeted Tuesday that “attorney-client privilege is dead” and proclaimed special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe is “A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!”
Attorney–client privilege is dead!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 10, 2018
A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 10, 2018
The New York Times was first to report the raid on Monday, in which officials seized records related to several topics, including materials relevant to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election and a $150,000 payment Ukraine to a Trump charity. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Cohen is being investigated for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance law violations.
Formal federal prosecutors and criminal justice experts told TPM on Monday that the FBI likely had to jump through a series of hoops to be authorized to seize an attorney’s records that would normally be protected under attorney-client privilege.
Per TPM’s Monday reporting:
The Justice Department has extensive rules about seizing records of lawyers that could typically fall under attorney-client privilege. Prosecutors are required to consult with the the Criminal Division at Main Justice, and to get the sign off of the U.S. attorney overseeing the investigation or the relevant assistant attorney general. It’s also recommended that a special team of attorneys who are walled off from the prosecutors overseeing the inquiry be set up to review the potentially privileged documents.
Read the TPM’s full analysis of the raid here.
