'Attorney-client privilege is dead!': Trump attacks FBI in tweetstorm after Michael Cohen raid
- President Donald Trump criticized the raid on his lawyer Michael Cohen in early-morning tweets Tuesday.
- He said "Attorney-client privilege is dead!", and called the Mueller investigation "A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!"
- There are rare exceptions to the practice of not raiding lawyer's offices, which the FBI appears to have engaged here.
President Donald Trump declared attorney-client privilege "dead" the morning after FBI agents raided the offices of his lawyer Michael Cohen.
In an early-morning pair of tweets, Trump called the raid "A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!", repeating an assessment he made to reporters the previous evening.
Moments before he said "Attorney-client privlege is dead!".
The President is correct that communications between clients and their lawyers are often beyond the reach of law enforcement based on this privilege, derived from the US constitution.
But when the occasion warrants it, authorities have the ability to waive this provision.
Business Insider yesterday reported that one possible reason for the "extraordinary" raid was because prosecutors had decided that less intrusive measures had no chance of success.
Former federal prosecutor Ken White, in a blog for Reason, wrote: "That's a very fraught and extraordinary move that requires multiple levels of authorization within the Department of Justice and an "elaborate review process."
Trump had sounded off over the raid the previous evening as well. At an event inside the White House, he told reporters: "I have this witch hunt constantly going on... it's an attack on on our country ... what we all stand for."
Trump also called Cohen a "good man" and labeled the special counsel Robert Mueller's team as "the most conflicted group of people I have ever seen."