In their latest lame attempt to discredit Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation, Republicans claim that Mueller’s office illegally obtained emails from Donald Trump’s transition team.
Since accusing Mueller of bias didn’t work, Trump and his cronies tried a new tactic in a blatant effort to end the investigation.
On Saturday, Trump for America attorney Kory Langhofer accused Mueller and his investigation of unlawfully procuring “tens of thousands” of emails from the General Services Administration (GSA) even while they were “aware that the GSA did not own or control the records in question.”
The materials shined a light on Trump officials such as Michael Flynn, who used the transition team email system. Flynn recently took a plea deal in exchange for testimony against Trump.
Langhofer says that the GSA also handed over laptops and cell phones that he claims contained emails that are “susceptible to privilege claims,” and argued that Mueller’s team violated the Fourth Amendment by conducting an illegal search and seizure. Langhofer also contends that Mueller violated the Presidential Transition Act of 1963.
Just hours after the Langhofer’s letter to Congress went public, Mueller’s office fired back.
“When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent, or appropriate criminal process,” spokesman Peter Carr said.
And Mueller has a lot of evidence and experts supporting him.
First of all, the emails in question all have .gov addresses, which makes them public and accessible to anyone. As Rep. Ted Lieu explained on Twitter, courts will probably not be siding with Trump’s transition team here.
Courts generally unwilling to find reasonable right to privacy for .gov emails. Also, since Trump lawyers don’t know what leads Mueller is investigating, they won’t know which emails may be important. This seems like another desperate attempt to smear the Mueller investigation. https://t.co/Z8o64Q6q6E
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) December 17, 2017
Furthermore, Rep. Elijah Cummings shot down the claim that Mueller somehow violated the Presidential Transition Act.
“Our (House Oversight) committee has direct jurisdiction over the Presidential Transition Act, and it simply does not support withholding transition team emails from criminal investigators,” Cummings said. “The president’s lawyers have said they want to comply with special counsel Mueller’s investigation fully, so it is odd that they now suggest they would have withheld key documents from federal investigators.”
Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti also poured cold water on Langhofer’s letter.
17/ Instead of sending a letter to Mueller, the attorneys sent a letter to Congress. Why? Probably to try to feed the growing effort to fire Mueller and/or try to discredit him to Congressional Republicans.
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 16, 2017
18/ Note also that the lawyers *don’t* say that the emails are privileged. They merely claim that some of the emails are “susceptible to privilege claims.” That’s weak language that suggests they’re not confident they have a strong claim that some of the emails are privileged.
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 16, 2017
19/ The biggest conclusion I’d draw from their letter is that they’re concerned about Mueller’s investigation and are doing whatever they can to discredit it. Their claims themselves are weak and are meant to persuade people who know nothing about criminal investigations. /end
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 16, 2017
In short, Trump and his team were caught with their pants down by Mueller, and now they are scrambling to mitigate how screwed they are by accusing Mueller of breaking the law even though there is no evidence that he did anything wrong. The emails were government emails, and the GSA willingly handed the materials over when the FBI asked for them. Trump and his team did not think Mueller had all these emails.
Now they are desperately trying to get Republicans in Congress to shut the investigation down by making wild accusations against a man who is doing his job exceptionally well.
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