Trump Lashes Out At FBI After Cohen Raid: "Attorney–Client Privilege Is Dead!"

[Mastan]

President Donald Trump is feeling the heat Tuesday morning.

After the FBI raided the home, office and hotel of longtime Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen - purportedly seizing privileged information regarding communications between Cohen and his clients (a group that, of course, includes the president) - President Donald Trump took some time out from a meeting with military leaders to blast both the special counsel and his own attorney general for allowing the "witch hunt" to proceed.

In a surprisingly intense rebuke, Trump described the raid as "disgraceful," "a whole new level of unfairness" and even went as far to describe it as "an attack on our country." Once again, he brought up the fact that "no one is looking at the other side".

This morning, Trump kept the drumbeat of attacks going with a series of tweets implicitly targeted at Mueller and the prosecutors who carried out the raid. For the nth time, Trump declared Robert Mueller's investigation "a total witch hunt"...

...And in a tweet that reiterates suspicions that investigators seized privileged communications between Trump and his personal attorney - communications that are privileged for a reason, because they could lead to self-incrimination if publicly exposed - Trump angrily declared that "Attorney-client privilege is dead!"

Trump of course, is correct to note that communications between clients and lawyers are usually beyond the reach of law enforcement based on this constitutional privilege, on occasion authorities can waive this provision.

One possible explanation for the unprecedented raid is because prosecutors had decided that "less intrusive" measures have no chance of success. Indeed, the referral to the FBI reportedly came straight from special prosecutor Robert Mueller. 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."

It also means that Trump will increasingly seek to lash out elsewhere and distract from his growing legal troubles, which almost certainly means another cruise missile attack on Syria is imminent, which in turn could launch a new, and "hot" conflict with Russia.

Markets slumped yesterday during the final minutes of the session on the news FBI agents had raided Cohen's home. Cohen is reportedly being investigated for bank fraud and campaign finance violations, and he is only the second subject in the Mueller probe to see their home and office raided by the Fed's. The first was Paul Manafort.

Late on Monday, Trump called Cohen a "good man" and labeled the special counsel Robert Mueller's team "the most conflicted group of people I have ever seen."