OOF: Court filing reveals Feds had ‘covert wiretaps’ on Michael Cohen’s email accounts
Posted at 7:08 pm on April 13, 2018 by Greg P.
In a court filing released on Friday, federal prosecutors revealed that they have already obtained search warrants for Michael Cohen’s emails and “covert wiretaps” have been in place for some time now:
Breaking: Court filing reveals prosecutors obtained “covert” search warrants on multiple email accounts of #MichaelCohen, showing “Cohen is in fact performing little to no legal work, and that zero emails were exchanged with President Trump.”
— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) April 13, 2018
Feds also tell the court they’ve been secretly reading Cohen’s emails from multiple accounts for a while now. pic.twitter.com/xLHuH8uIbA
— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) April 13, 2018
From the filing (pages 12-13)
Fourth, the USAO-SDNY has specific reason to doubt that the seized materials will
include the volume and nature of attorney-client communications that Cohen claims. This is because the USAO-SDNY has already obtained search warrants – covert until this point – on multiple different email accounts maintained by Cohen, and has conducted a privilege review of the materials obtained pursuant to those warrants. The results of that review, as reported by the USAO’s Filter Team, indicate that Cohen is in fact performing little to no legal work, and that zero emails were exchanged with President Trump.
And if they have the emails, they may have phone calls as well:
NEW: Trump called Michael Cohen today to talk. Notable because:
-Cohen is now under criminal investigation
-Cohen is under (lawful) surveillance (if emails are searched, calls could be too)
-It’s dangerous for subjects to talk to each other in a probehttps://t.co/1PrgHASisH
— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) April 13, 2018
More from the filing…
Prosecutors argued that Cohen’s “lack of truthfulness” led to the FBI raid (couple this with the report above that they were already reading his emails):
DOJ says the criminal investigation of Cohen, the president’s attorney, is for offenses “which sound in fraud and evidence a lack of truthfulness.” (Which it says helps explain the decision to execute a warrant and not just ask for records.) pic.twitter.com/a3V82xS7jt
— Brad Heath (@bradheath) April 13, 2018
They’re also using Trump’s own words against him to argue there’s not attorney-client privilege because he said publicly that he didn’t know Cohen paid off Stormy Daniels:
DOJ uses President Trump’s comments that he didn’t know about the $130,000 payment to @StormyDaniels to argue that communications on the subject would not be privileged. pic.twitter.com/pgoJpchWui
— Brad Heath (@bradheath) April 13, 2018
The feds also argued Cohen is not “currently engaged in any significant practice of law”:
The Feds allege Michael Cohen doesn’t really practice law anymore, mostly does stuff for Trump, and that they have sensitive proof of it – thus redacted: pic.twitter.com/vyCHQf1y0Y
— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) April 13, 2018
Trump, however, is arguing that every email between Cohen and any Trump Organization employee is privileged:
President Trump’s private business has already notified DOJ that it considers “each and every” communication between Cohen and people working for the company to be privileged. pic.twitter.com/6gHLK0xccX
— Brad Heath (@bradheath) April 13, 2018
— Brad Heath (@bradheath) April 13, 2018
Do I have this right? Trump has proved that his communications with Cohen are not lawyer-client privileged because he stated that he had no communication with Cohen so, viola, guilty?
Brad Heath is a freakin' genius!