I’m certain he was lax with his security. Future regimes may not be. Stay vigilant!
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Last time I checked D.T. and Cohen are two different guys.
No, the Piece of Totally Unreliable, or whatever POTUS stands for these days, has stood up and announced… “Attorney–client privilege is dead!”. What does that mean? Has he abolished attorney–client privilege? I doubt if he can do that for everyone by fiat. But he can publicly renounce his own attorney–client privilege. Or he can tell his attorney that he needs no longer feel bound by it.
I’m pretty sure he meant one of the two.
Go get him, boys!
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This is exactly what my husband quoted when he heard the news.
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Well given that the search warrant allows them to look at privleged documents/communications with a client. It has to have something to do with work he did for a client. And given the investigation comes out of work he did relating to Stormy Daniels. That client is almost certainly Trump.
So what ever they’re doing is directly Trump related. It may not specifically implicate Trump. And since they referred it to another office in DOJ it probably doesn’t directly involve Russia.
Cohen is kind of a nut job. He’s been talking for months about loyalty to dear leader. And the assumption seems to be that he’ll never flip. But he’s deeply embedded in Trump’s sketchy business. Including the Russia end. So basically it looks more like they’re going after his documents. If the NY office runs into anything Russia related that’s considered non privledged. Then it can be referred back to Mueller. Who can get a warrant to look at the rest of it for Russia related stuff that may be ruled non-privledged.
They took his computers, files, seemingly everything. From his home and office. They have a lot they can look at if they can convince a judge.
It’s apparently required any time attorney client privilege might be involved. Another team, that is absolutely not allowed to communicate with the investigation digs through the material. They have to have anything they think may not be privileged, or where privlege doesn’t hold up. Approved as such by a judge. Then it gets sent over to the investigation.
Mueller wouldn’t have neccisarily had the opportunity to do that even if it there wasn’t the privilege problem. You don’t just have free access to evidence in what’s now a separate investigation. I don’t know a lot of the details on how it all works. But things can be referred/ volunteered by one agency/unit to another. There are ways to request things. And there are processes for getting warrants for Mueller’s group to get a look at things.
Warrants are kind of weird. From what I understand it isn’t as strict as you can only use what’s specifically listed in the warrant. You can’t go looking for things you haven’t gotten a warrant for. Thing you don’t have probable cause to suspect are there.
But if you come across evidence, even for un related crimes, While your following the letter of the warrant. Or it’s just out there. You can use it.
Like if you go into a place with a warrant to find evidence of a robbery. If there’s a giant pile of pot on the table when you walk in the door. That’s typically kosher, cause you didn’t go looking for it. If you find a giant pile of pot in a locked drawer you might not. Especially if you had no reason to go into that drawer except for looking for pot. But if you were, say, going into that drawer looking for a handgun used in the robbery. Well you might be able to.
From what I’ve been told certain warrants are written extremely broadly to maximize this. And they fight it out in court later to see what does and doesn’t get excluded.
This warrant is probably a lot stricter. To minimize the chance anything gets excluded. But the same factors should apply. Provided they had the legal right to seize what they did. And they went through it properly. Anything that bears on another investigation. Or reveals another crime. Should be useable if they dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s. But they need to be incredibly careful.
And I think that’s another part of why this was referred outside of Mueller’s investigation. He’s effectively created a bunch more layers of oversight for anything that comes out of it. It’s not just oversight from the issuing of the warrant, And your various courts determining what you can use. You have the document team. Then the judge the document team has to convince. Then the actual investigation in NY, under the oversight of a Trump appointee. Then whatever processes for gaining access to further documents from that team. And so forth.
Each layer is more political cover. And more opportunity to carefully lay out, And solidify that you do in fact have the right to view and use that evidence. That it was discovered properly.
Fuck yes. Even if I wasn’t concerned about Trump triggering a blood wave I’d have a total true crime boner right now.
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(Sweating profusely) “If there’s ANYONE whose undying loyalty to the President warrants a pardon and definitely not a prison shanking to keep him quiet, it’s me!”
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No. Really, no. The number of hoops you have to jump through, the number of judges you need to convince, and the standard of evidence you have to rise to to break attorney-client privilege is very high. A Court acting “political” doesn’t even come within miles.
The SDNY office had to get approval at many levels.
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if it’s one of those “we all assumed it was a law, turns out it was just convention” things, we certainly know how Trunp, et. al feel about those…
It would be karmically satisfying if the presidency ended up being the sun these wax-winged motherfuckers flew too close to. Or, you know, some other concentration of perpetual fire…
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I know it was far more difficult and complex than this, in reality, but I can’t help picturing Mueller having this conversation with multiple judges:
“So Trump’s personal attorney, who works at the same law firm that protects both Cambridge Analytica and Russia’s Gazprom Oil, says he randomly gave a sex worker $130k out of Trump’s own campaign funds for no reason at all.”
“Bwahahaa what?? Oh man, here’s your warrant, go for it, cripes, this will be fun.”
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I believe he claimed it was his own money…
“In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford. Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”
As I understand it that’s the reason for the problem. If it had been the campaign’s money from properly declared sources it would be fine. But because it’s Cohen’s money and if (which seems obvious) it was paid in order to keep the story out of the news because of the effect it would have on the presidential campaign, then it is an undeclared campaign donation.
Same argument would allegedly apply if it was Trump’s own money. It should have been properly recorded as part of the campaign funding. I’m sure there are plenty of available euphemisms for ‘hush money’. 
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since no one has actually tried it before
I see what you did there
Does anyone else picture the internal Mueller team meetings sounding exactly like Paul Giamatti plotting with his team on Billions? Sans the genius-level intellect of the adversary, of course.
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Did it go down something like that, you’re asking?
I am not uncertain.
Wouldn’t she be hoping that he has swallowed said organ?
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If I had to guess that’s why Trump’s response is so unfocused. It’s really hard to sensibly attack this as a “nothing burger” or political when there’s now at least one court endorsed document that had to prove something criminal interupts privlege out there. With all those layers of Trump appointed oversight.
His initial response he basically blamed everyone he could think of and described it as an attack on America. Crazy.
Eta: and an outline of said hoops.
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Better call Saul, Michael.
The existence of millions of South Koreans in range of North Korean weapons isn’t likely to factor into Trump’s decision making. The man clearly lacks the capacity for empathy, and the bigger the number the harder to empathize.
If he feels slighted he could well decide to smash something, especially if Bolton is whispering in his ear and the shit is hitting the fan at home.
I just hope the generals will require more than just a tantrum to take action.
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