re: Our President's attorney's allege illegal conduct by Robert Mueller

quote:

---

Trump has never invoked executive privilege, and I don't think that can be used to conceal criminal behavior.

---

You don't invoke attorney/client privilege. That is the privelege being discussed. If Mueller received actually privileged materials he has a duty to return them. And to not read them. Mueller is dirty. You don't care though because you like his politics.

What he did wasn't illegal, the GSA actually owned the documents, not the Trump transition team.

However, that isn't the way an honest broker goes about running an investigation. The GSA should have required a subpoena or warrant before turning those documents over as well.

Not allowed?

"I'm not aware of any impropriety in what the department has done in making these text messages available," and "not aware" of "any evidence that we disclosed information to a reporter that wasn't appropriate for public release or wasn't disclosed to the Congress," Rosenstein assured the House Judiciary Committee.
According to a statement from Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Flores, "When the initial inquiries came from committees and members of Congress, the Deputy Attorney General consulted with the Inspector General, and the Inspector General determined that he had no objection to the Department's providing the material to the Congressional committees that had requested it."
The "senior career ethics advisors" then conducted their own review and determined no concerns related to the Privacy Act were implicated in releasing the messages, Flores said.
While many have criticized the Justice Department for making private messages available to reporters in the midst of an ongoing inspector general probe, the Justice Department under President Barack Obama took similar steps.
In 2011 and 2012, when Congress was demanding the Justice Department turn over internal emails related to the botched gun-running probe known as “Fast and Furious,” the department repeatedly invited reporters to a department conference room to view private messages.
Inside the Justice Department in Washington, a department official would hand out copies of the documents after they were sent to Capitol Hill and then brief reporters on individual emails sent to and from department employees. The documents were not provided under any condition of anonymity.
The Justice Department began briefing reporters on "Fast and Furious"-related documents only after select portions of documents sent to Congress were repeatedly leaked.
At the time, the Justice Department's inspector general was still engaged in a wide-ranging, internal investigation related to the failed gun-running probe and the department's response to congressional inquiries about it.
In trying to explain his own department's recent decisions, Rosenstein told lawmakers Wednesday: "Our goal ... is to make sure that it's clear to you and the American people, we are not concealing anything that's embarrassing." LINK

quote:

---

The letter only said "susceptible" to privilege. Trump has never invoked executive privilege, and I don't think that can be used to conceal criminal behavior.

---

They weren't talking about executive privelege you idiot, they were talking about attorney client privelege and that automatically applies no matter who's server the material was stored on.

For example, say you email your lawyer and tell him you killed someone. Then say you are arrested and the police search your emails, and let's say you use GMail, and let's say they get a subpoena and GMail hands over your emails that are on their server. The police can NOT use that email against you because you you have attorney client privilege built in. Now, in order for that to apply the lawyer has to be "your" lawyer, meaning hired specifically for that matter, or on retainer .

If during the course of reviewing these emails Mueller and his team find any that are covered by such, they can NOT use them or the information in them for anything. Not only can it not be used as evidence to prosecute anyone, it can't even be used to further develop other evidence. It is completely off limits.

Clearly Trump needs an insurance policy!

I agree up until your last paragraph. They can't cite privileged communications in court (except in limited circumstances some of which may be in play but let's ignore that). Once they've seen something, even if they're not entitled to, they don't have to pretend not to know. They can use their knowledge to form the basis of the next stage of investigation. It's like having a math question and being given the answer, but no working, so you use the answer to figure out the correct method and then use the method to confirm the answer.

To continue your murder analogy, if you disclose the location of the body in the email, and that place is 20th on the list of places to search, it can magically get bumped up to 1st on the list, but the police can't use the email itself to get a warrant, they need to get someone else to give the same info.

quote:

---

4th Amendment is pretty clear, gotta have a warrant. Also some of these emails would have been discussions with transition team lawyers and fall under lawyer client privilege.

---

This simply isn't true. There is no requirement that there MUST be a warrant.

If you voluntarily give evidence to LEOs they can use it without a warrant. And that's what happened here, the GSA willingly gave that material to Mueller.

Now the attorney client privilege still exists here where applicable.

quote:

---

I agree up until your last paragraph. They can't cite privileged communications in court (except in limited circumstances some of which may be in play but let's ignore that). Once they've seen something, even if they're not entitled to, they don't have to pretend not to know.

---

Fruit of the poisonous tree.

quote:

---

agree up until your last paragraph. They can't cite privileged communications in court (except in limited circumstances some of which may be in play but let's ignore that). Once they've seen something, even if they're not entitled to, they don't have to pretend not to know. They can use their knowledge to form the basis of the next stage of investigation. It's like having a math question and being given the answer, but no working, so you use the answer to figure out the correct method and then use the method to confirm the answer.

To continue your murder analogy, if you disclose the location of the body in the email, and that place is 20th on the list of places to search, it can magically get bumped up to 1st on the list, but the police can't use the email itself to get a warrant, they need to get someone else to give the same info.

---

We're essentially saying the same thing.

I've ran MANY investgiations where we came up with evidence that maybe it would have been legally obtained maybe not (because sometimes when just going through material you see stuff and realize for whatever reason you can't use it) and had to come up with a way to get to the end without using the tainted evidence.

In our analogy here, you can't use the email to find the body, but now knowing where the body is you CAN use that information to focus your investigation elsewhere to come up with the same information that is in the email that you can't use.