President Trump isn’t reacting well to the raid on his attorney’s office.
Not surprisingly, the President has not reacted well to yesterday’s news about the raid on the office and home of longtime Trump lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen, and it’s raised renewed questions about whether he might be considering moving against Justice Department officials he believes are biased against him:
WASHINGTON — President Trump angrily unloaded on his top law enforcement officials on Monday night, complaining that the F. B. I. “broke into” the office of Michael D. Cohen, his personal lawyer, and assailing two early-morning raids as a “disgraceful situation” and an “attack on our country in a true sense.”
The president repeatedly said that the raids were part of a “witch hunt” against him that has been conducted since he took office, and he mused about the possibility that he might soon fire Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia inquiry.
“We’ll see what may happen,” Mr. Trump said as he began a meeting with senior military officials to discuss responses to a chemical attack in Syria. “Many people have said, ‘You should fire him.’”
The president railed against Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, for recusing himself in the Russia investigation, and he blasted the F. B. I. for failing to investigate Hillary Clinton, “where there are crimes.” He also lashed out at Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who is overseeing the Russia investigation.
Mr. Trump delivered the emotional tirade hours after federal officials raided Mr. Cohen’s office and hotel room, seizing business records, emails and documents, including information related to a payment that Mr. Cohen made to a pornographic film actress.
The raids were in part the result of a referral to federal officials by Mr. Mueller. Mr. Trump called Mr. Mueller’s team “the most biased group of people” and said that it contained mostly Democrats and some Republicans who worked for President Barack Obama.
“That is really now in a whole new level of unfairness,” Mr. Trump said of the raids involving Mr. Cohen. Officials said the White House learned about the raids from Mr. Cohen’s lawyer after they were carried out but before they became public knowledge.
Mr. Trump has long complained that the Russia inquiry was a politically motivated attempt to undermine the legitimacy of his election victory. And he has been highly critical of Mr. Sessions and the F. B. I. for failing to adequately investigate Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server.
But the aggressive move by federal officials against Mr. Cohen, the president’s longtime personal lawyer, appeared to strike a particularly sensitive nerve. Mr. Cohen, who works for Mr. Trump’s private company, has long been considered one of the president’s closest business confidants.
Mr. Trump reacted to the raids without any prompting from reporters, who had been brought into the Cabinet Room where the president was meeting with Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense; John R. Bolton, the new national security adviser; and other military officials to discuss the situation in Syria. As the cameras began rolling, Mr. Trump immediately condemned the actions against Mr. Cohen.
“So, I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, a good man, and it’s a disgraceful situation,” he said. “It’s a total witch hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long time. I’ve wanted to keep it down.”
It was unclear what Mr. Trump meant by saying he “wanted to keep it down.” He went on to criticize Mr. Mueller’s team for examining the president’s associates.
“They only keep looking at us. So they find no collusion, and then they go from there and they say, ‘Well, let’s keep going,’ and they raid an office of a personal attorney early in the morning, and I think it’s a disgrace,” Mr. Trump said.
The president also defended his decision to fire James B. Comey as F. B. I. director, saying that “I turned out to do the right thing because you look at all of the things that he’s done and the lies and you look at what’s gone on at the F. B. I.”
He criticized Mr. Rosenstein for having “signed a FISA warrant,” apparently a reference to the role Mr. Rosenstein played in authorizing the wiretap of a Trump associate in the Russia inquiry. Republicans have been highly critical of the warrant, saying the F. B. I. persuaded judges to authorize it on false pretenses.
Here’s the video of Trump’s statement late yesterday:
Trump also turned to the subject of a handful of early-morning tweets:
Attorney-client privilege is dead!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 10,2018
A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 10,2018
Trump’s tirade is, of course, entirely without merit and the idea that what’s going on here is any kind of partisan smear campaign is utter nonsense. As more than one person has pointed out in the time since news of the raid(s) broke, all of the major officials involved in applying for the warrant and carrying out the raid are Republicans and all but one of them was appointed to their current position by President Trump. Robert Mueller, for example, was appointed U. S. Attorney for Massachusetts by Ronald Reagan, served as an Assistant Attorney General under George H. W Bush, briefly served as Deputy Attorney General under George W. Bush, and was later nominated by George W. Bush to be F. B. I. Director, a position he held until 2013. Rod Rosenstein, who likely is the one who decided to refer the information that Mueller had uncovered to the Federal prosecutors in New York City, had been the U. S. Attorney for Maryland for all George W. Bush’s second term and continued to serve in that position for all of Barack Obama’s Presidency before being named Deputy Attorney General by Donald Trump. Finally, the U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, whose office carried out the raid yesterday, was appointed by President Trump and, according to numerous reports, is a lifelong Republican who donated the maximum. Overseeing it all, of course, is a Federal Judge, who would have had to sign off on any search warrant and who most likely carefully scrutinized the application given the fact that prosecutors were seeking to take the unusual, albeit not unprecedently step of seizing documents belonging to an attorney that could potentially be covered by the attorney-client privilege. Given all of this, Trump’s accusation that this is a “witch hunt” is obvious nonsense.
As for Trump’s offhand tweet about the attorney-client privilege, while this is obviously a concern any time law enforcement seeks to gain access to documents, communications, or records in the hands of an attorney that privilege is not absolute and there are exceptions to that rule. The one that is most notable in this case, of course, is the “crime-fraud” exception to the privilege. Generally speaking, the crime-fraud exception applies in situations where the client was in the process of committing or intending to commit a crime or fraudulent act and the communication was made with the intent to either further that crime or to cover it up. The exception would also apply in a situation where it could be shown that the attorney had stopped being an advocate or adviser and instead become a participant with their client in what amounts to a conspiracy to either commit a crime or to cover up a crime. Potential examples of the types of activity that would lead to the application of this exception to the privilege could include, but aren’t necessarily limited to, situations where a client attempts to get their attorney to knowingly suborn perjury, to destroy or conceal evidence, to engage in witness tampering, or to conceal income or assets. There are also other potential acts that could fall within the exception, although it’s worth noting that in all these cases the presumption will always be in favor of the application of the privilege and a prosecutor would need to be able to make a strong showing to get around it.
In Cohen’s case, it seems apparent that the motivation for the probe is two-pronged. First, of course, there is his involvement in the negotiation of the October 2016 agreement with adult film star Stormy Daniels that resulted in her receiving $130,000 to remain silent about her relationship with then-candidate Trump. As I’ve said before, the circumstances surrounding this transaction raise numerous questions that could implicate both Cohen and his client in potential charges of violating Federal election law, bank fraud, mail fraud, and other crimes. Additionally, Daniels alleged during her 60 Minutes interview that she was approached years prior to that agreement by a person who made physical threats against her if she revealed the details of her affair with Trump.
