moldyoldy

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.
“It’s procedurally cumbersome, it’s sensitive, it raises the hackles of the bar,” Sam Buell, a former prosecutor who worked on the Enron investigation, told TPM. “It’s not done on a fishing expedition. It’s only done when you’re reasonably confident that you’re going to find evidence of criminality and you need to do it with a search warrant.”
Investigators’ willingness to go the route of a high-profile raid, instead of a less intrusive subpoena or even a voluntary request for documents, suggested to outside experts that there’s at least some concern that Cohen could be withholding evidence.
“It tells you that, one, they had some pretty compelling reason to think that Cohen was not or would not produce the records they were trying to get in response to a subpoena” Sanchez said, adding that he’d, “infer that they have some evidence he has already withheld something that he claimed to have turned over.”

Secondly, Sanchez said, the move suggests that the prosecutors would have reason to believe that the records that they are seeking would be exempt from attorney-client privilege. The most obvious exception, Sanchez said, is the crime-fraud exemption which applies to communications made in the furtherance of a crime.
“If you’re talking to your attorney about a crime you’ve already committed, that’s privileged,” Sanchez said. “If you’re talking to your attorney to get them to help you to commit crime, that’s the part that’s not privileged.”
Former prosecutors also said that move to hand off the inquiry to federal prosecutors in New York once Mueller f**gged the information shows that the special counsel is playing it by the book, even as President Trump and his allies suggest that he’s on a witch hunt.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/michael-cohen-fbi-raid-experts-react

JFlorio Loc: Seminole Florida

Brilliant bumpkin. The client attorney relationship must be sacrosanct for our judicial system to work. Think about where this started. There was a very questionable Russia, Trump investigation started by ardent anti-Trumpers.. The entire investigation was centered around supposed Trump, Russian collusion. What came out. Trump has had no collusion with Russians that is illegal. However; there is strong evidence that a corrupt FBI and DOJ conspired to bring down a duly elected President. Exactly why the million or so documents subpoenaed by the over site committee have been slow walked to them. Of course you and you ilk don't care about this. You are more about party than country. Before you say your an independent don't waste your time. We know what you are.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

"While the Cohen raid came as a referral from Mueller’s team, it was not officially part of his investigation. It was executed by the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. And the man running that office, interim U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman, is a Trump appointee whom the president personally met with.

Mueller is required to consult with his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, if he comes across information worth investigating that does not officially fit with his mandate of looking into Russia’s role in the 2016 e******n. Rosenstein then can refer the matter to a U.S. attorney’s office.

It’s not easy to search a practicing lawyer’s office. As The Washington Post reported, 'To serve a search warrant on a practicing attorney, federal prosecutors are required to obtain approval from top Justice Department officials. That means the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, ... as well as Justice Department officials in Washington, probably signed off.'

Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed Berman to the job in January. Berman has a reputation among his friends and co-workers as a sharp, hard-working lawyer. And he’s certainly not part of any Democratic cabal out to get Trump: He donated $5,400 to Trump’s p**********l campaign.

Berman also met personally with Trump when he was up for the job, according to CNN.

Trump fired the previous U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, just three months into his presidency. Bharara rejected Trump’s overtures to establish a direct line of communication, and he told the White House he did not find the contact appropriate. Less than a day later, Trump fired him.

Bharara said that he has confidence that if his old office is handling the investigation into Cohen, it won’t be the partisan hit job the president is trying to claim it is.

'If the reporting is true, particularly the part about this being approved by the Southern District of New York Attorney’s Office, which I used to lead, are all people who are Republican, and all people who have basically been handpicked by Donald Trump,' Bharara said."

moldyoldy

You have drawn your wishful conclusions for the investigation with no results except the indictments of several trump aides.

badbob85037

Lets see how long these treasonous Leftest when they find this so called warrant has nothing to do with what this investigation, signed by some Leftest judge on a he said she said line of crap After still playing this game for a year and a half it's getting old, real old. Still no investigation on that treasonous ho Clinton. What ever they do find if anything will be nothing when compared with the pay to play acts of Clinton. And I for one have had it with that B still free. The FBI no special counsel. Does anyone see the Democrats as anything but the enemy. They have used every dirty trick in the book both criminal and treasonous to take out an elected president to the cheers of their useful i***ts that couldn't tell the difference between the Constitution and the C*******t Manifesto if one came up, introduced it's self then kicked them where they store their heads.

moldyoldy

It is truly amazing how the left has forced all these republicans to investigate trump for no apparent reason.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has 28 authorized judgeships, filled by judges appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. I have yet to identify who signed off on that particular warrant.

Kevyn

The watergate investigation took over 2 years to take down Nixon this one is far from over. Just wait until the Democrats take back the house and the obstruction ends.

working class stiff Loc: N. Carolina

Yeah, 'the left' has a ton of soft power. Only explanation I can conjure.

woodguru

That's your takeaway here?

It's rather obvious that there is evidence of crimes, that means nothing, you don't think the "lock them up" applies to whoever has done something illegal? In a reverse situation of this applied to either Obama and Hillary you wouldn't care how the prosecutors got information proving crimes, you'd have loved it and been saying lock them up.

You can bet your ass that in dealing with attorney client privilege that this is bullet proof, bomb proof evidence and the standard set for getting it will be as well.

And already the drumbeat of attacking how the evidence was obtained will go on and on and on. Reverse it and the how is overshadowed by the crime.

woodguru

But then there is the other explanation...that there were apparent reasons?

woodguru

It was signed by a Trump appointed judge, has it occurred to you that judges have an obligation to be loyal to the law not Trump?

Trump and the right expect biased loyalty and get all butt hurt when it doesn't happen.

woodguru

There, fixed it for you.

woodguru

What I am is a patriot, who cares about country and democracy more than party, and it offends me to the bone that the GOP intelligence committee has repeatedly taken highly classified information about the investigation right straight to the party under investigation, the white house.

Trump has repeatedly queried people involved with the investigations as to what's up, something that he simply fails to understand he can't do. He is obsessed with the investigation, as it is now very obvious he has reason to be freaked out. Nunes sharing information with the white house is a crime, he openly said he shared information he thought was crucial to the president. That is putting loyalty to the president before loyalty to justice and the country.

JFlorio Loc: Seminole Florida

What you are is a troll joke.