Michael Cohen: FBI was ‘professional, courteous, respectful’

In turn, Trump lashed out privately at Rosenstein, with the Washington Post reporting that he “stewed” over the deputy attorney general’s role in the raid – ‘at times raising his voice’.

I’ve been saying for a while now that the President’s alleged affair with the adult-film star Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) is not what he should be anxious about, both because his evangelical base has given him a “mulligan” on his alleged affairs, and because marital infidelity is not by itself an impeachable offense. One minute later he added, “A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!“. It’s rare for a USA attorney to recuse himself unless he has a personal or financial relationship with the subject of the probe.

Wilson said that Trump should be feeling “absolute terror” about the raid since authorities were “able to obtain extraordinarily broad authority” for their raid and were “granted search warrants that may even penetrate attorney-client privilege”.

Raids on personal attorneys require the highest level of vetting at the Justice Department, according to Frank Montoya, a former senior Federal Bureau of Investigation official.

But by Tuesday, we learned Berman had recused himself from any decision-making in Mueller’s investigation.

Rosenstein past year appointed special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to investigate potential ties between Russian Federation and the Trump campaign during the presidential election.

Trump denies the allegations and last week told reporters he was unaware of the payment.

“I have this witch hunt constantly going on”, Trump said.

According to Cohen’s court filing, Daniels’ defamation suit is “completely without merit and appears to be a desperate attempt by [Daniels] to keep at least a portion of this case out of arbitration”. Under this doctrine, the privilege does not protect lawyer-client materials in situations in which the lawyer was helping the client commit a continuing or planned crime or fraud, since that would not serve society’s goal of ensuring lawyers can render sound legal advice. Acting with a search warrant, the raid was carried out at least in part based on a referral from Mueller’s team to a federal prosecutor in NY. Instead of just going to your supervisor and getting your supervisor’s approval and then going to the judge, you actually have to get the United States attorney himself, who is somebody appointed by President Trump who is overseeing the entire office. If Mueller and his team get Cohen to flip, the President has far greater criminal exposure than he ever has previously.

The White House says President Donald Trump thinks he can fire special counsel Robert Mueller, but isn’t taking that step now.

“He certainly believes he has the power to do so”, she said. If approved, Trump would be the first sitting president to be deposed since former President Bill Clinton during Ken Starr’s special counsel investigation. So how significant is it that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was able to search Michael Cohen’s office? The Southern District of NY, which conducted the seizure of Cohen’s financial records and documents, reportedly received a tip from the special counsel, who came across this information in his investigation.

“I have been advised by federal prosecutors that the NY action is, in part, a referral by the Office of Special Counsel, Robert Mueller”. But the issue has yet to be fully resolved and the disagreement has played out in conservative media, primarily Fox News, likely drawing the attention of their most powerful viewer: the President.