The warrant would have to be laser focused for things effected by attorney client privilege.
Less so for things not. Like if they were searching his apartment for dead bodies completely unconnected to a client. Or find non privileged documents relating to a crime. The “in the course of executing the warrent this shit was all just stapled to a wall” reasoning would probably still work (I am not a lawyer).
My point was that in order to get such a warrant you would effectively have to prove that privilege didn’t exist. Basically you have to prove that the legal work itself represented criminal activity. Like prove. To a judge. You have to have some serious level evidence to work that. And you need the whole process and warrant to be sit tight to avoid having it tossed out or getting sued.
So it’s probably pretty narrow just for ass covering reasons.
Apparently the team working the case doesn’t even get to see anything that might be privileged until another team clears it as OK to look at. So theres even less chance of just stumbling on something you could find a way to use or look at later.
But like I said. To even knock on this guy’s door. They had to have something better than solid. Not just probable cause.
Apparently he’s also broadly well regarded on both ends of the political spectrum as non partisan and reliable when it comes to doing his job. And that may have something to do with why this case was sent there.
There’s considerable political cover in puting this particular case in the office of a Trump appointee who GOP politicians and pundits have talked up while shouting witch hunt at Mueller. Especially if that guy is the sort who actually does the job properly.
Well said and played. However, I raise you one John Bolton (mustachio of doom). A conventional airstrike that continues for a week or two will be seen as the prudent thing to do after a snub of Ill Douche (Agent Orange? Mango Mussolini? Cadet Bonespurs? Molester in Chief?)
I am convinced they will not bother with the formalities of making a bogus case like Iraq War II. Just ‘they disrespected mah authority, thus we had no choice but to start bombin em!’
All I know about law, I learned from following Scientology, which never-the-less can be a good education in weird and subtle areas of law. (Their cases tend to set precedents in many countries.)
When Scientology was caught burglarizing government offices (“stealing photocopy paper” as they like to call it) in the 1970s, the FBI conducted massive raids and caught them red-handed with a fuckton of stolen documents from many government departments and agencies, as well as similar from other counties. (The Snow White Program: The largest domestic spying operation ever caught. They don’t do that any more, or less.)
The thing is, Scientology almost managed to have the search warrants, with the smoking evidence collected, tossed out. The fight went back and forth all the way up the legal system, and only ended when the Supreme Court declined to hear it. Granted Scientology are masters at playing the Religion and First Amendment cards, but it showed me how careful the play has to be at that level. Good to hear that they’re using a firewall document vetting process.
Why not? It’s a Federal Judge and Federal Prosecutor, I’m pretty sure it would be Federal charges within Trump’s pardon powers.
It’s charges brought by a State that Trump apparently can’t pardon (though it’s probably untested legal territory). But a pardon is risky from a legal perspective since the recipient can no longer claim the 5th amendment. Pardoning Cohen might just mean they can compel him to testify (thus revealing incriminating evidence under risk of contempt, which requires another pardon).
I think it’s more likely that Mueller thinks the campaign finance violation is a separate crime that doesn’t make sense for him to prosecute.
Plus, having his investigators digging through privileged documents between Trump and his lawyer carries some big risks. Imagine there’s a link between Trump and Russian oligarch Dimitri that Mueller wants to investigate. And Dimitri also shows up in Cohen’s documents.
A judge might decide that Dimitri was only investigated because of Cohen’s documents, but since collusion and Dimitri were not part of the warrant that evidence is inadmissible. Suddenly your smoking gun is thrown out of court.
It’s much safer to have someone else look through all of that dangerous evidence, and if something useful shows up in the public record as a result of that investigation it’s fair game.
I was mulling over this possibility as well. Albeit, I assumed that it was more straightforward, that the documents now in the FBI custody were fair game for Mueller to peruse at his leisure. (IANAL)
Indeed, and given that we know from his proven track record that Mueller is the best rat-catcher in the land, I feel pretty safe calling it:
To be clear IANAL either but I suspect violating attorney client privilege can be a very risky manoeuvre.
Of course, if the other investigation stumbles upon something really incriminating (though unrelated to Stormy Daniels) in Cohen’s docs I suspect there’s official and judge friendly channels for it to make it’s way back to Mueller!
Yup. Although I’d say they’re not going for the Trump-related stuff yet.
This is a long game of chess, and Cohen isn’t the prize. So they don’t really want to prosecute him, they want him to cooperate in order to safe his neck.
So for starters, they’ll look for something they can pin on him that is bound to stick. Preferably technicalities. Something that usually doesn’t matter, but technically amounts to, say, wire fraud. Tax evasion. Computer misuse. There are a lot of possibilities.
Or being a naughty boy on a personal level. Like being able to prove he took part in a cocaine party and handed out the goodies. Again, lots of possibilities.
There is always something.
A handful of small, maybe even petty stuff that won’t go away and will add up to several years in federal prison, and not the club fed.
No. Seoul is some 30 miles from the border. About 10 million people live in Seoul proper. Another 15 to 16 million people live in Seoul’s commuter belt. All in all, roughly half of the entire population of South Korea lives in or around Seoul.
North Korea has
a) a population of ca 25 million
b) amassed enough conventional weaponry (artillery, rocket artillery) at the border, a sizable part of it in hardened positions, to turn the better part if the Seoul metro area into a lot of sad little craters.
I would presume that enkidoodler was referring to air strikes on Syria in reltation for the use of chemical weapons. The prospect of meetings between Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in and even between Kim and Trump himself should keep military “options” against North Korea off the table for the moment.
EDIT: Now I’ve read back through the conversation I see that enkidoodler was referring specifically to North Korea. Would Trump really bomb North Korea when a summit with Kim is on the horizon? Anyway, a strike on Syria would work just as well as a distraction from Trump’s domestic problems.
They suspected Cohen would destroy the evidence which is why they got a warrant and I’d love to see that thing. The bar for warrants involving attorney client communications is much higher than that for a customary search warrant.
Can you imagine what the reaction on right-wing media would be if the Obamas’ longtime legal consigliere had had his or her offices raided by the friggin’ FBI? Or a major campaign figure, a Plouffe or an Axelrod? It beggars the imagination.
