Blackmail material? Mueller obtains tens of thousands of Trump transition emails - potentially illegally

Max Greenwood
The Hill
Sat, 16 Dec 2017 20:56 UTC

© Larry Downing / Reuters

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team of investigators is in possession of tens of thousands of emails from the Trump transition team, Axios reported Saturday.

Those emails include messages belonging to President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, as well as other members of the transition team's political leadership and the foreign policy team, according to Axios.

Mueller's prosecutors reportedly used the emails to question witnesses, and are also looking to the messages to confirm information and follow new leads.

According to Axios, Mueller obtained the emails from the General Services Administration, which managed the transition team's email accounts. Transition officials had reportedly assumed that Mueller would want the emails, and separated ones that they believed contained privileged information.

But Mueller was reportedly able to obtain all the emails from 12 accounts.

Mueller's office declined to comment on the report.

Comment: According to Trump's lawyer, who wrote to Congress about it, Mueller did not obtain these emails legally:

In a letter sent to the House and the Senate and seen by Fox News, Kory Langhofer, lawyer for Trump's transition team, claimed that Mueller obtained "tens of thousands of emails," including confidential communications between a client and a lawyer, due to "unlawful conduct" by the staffers at the General Services Administration (GSA), which hosted the Trump team's email servers during the transition.

Accusing the GSA of "unauthorized disclosures" for giving Mueller access to private information it "did not own or control," Langhofer went to blame the agency for infringing on the right of the US citizens to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, as guaranteed by the 4th Amendment.

The special counsel's office has reportedly made "extensive use"of the texts seized from Trump's transition team that include "materials that are susceptible to privilege claims," Langhofer wrote, adding that apart from internal emails, the GSA also handed over laptops, cell phones and an iPad at its own liberty.

Trump's team discovered what it believes a breach of privacy on December 12 and December 13, the lawyer said, noting that some of the compromised materials were leaked to the media by "unknown persons."

Appealing to the Senate Homeland Security and House Oversight Committee, Langhofer called on them to ensure future transitions are secured form being mishandled by government bodies, in particular when it is under an investigation driven by political motives.

With the lingering probe into Trump's alleged ties to Russia having failed so far to produce any proof to support the allegations, it itself has been hit with claims of potential conflict of interest. Last week, it was revealed that one of Mueller's investigative team members, prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, publicly expressed his admiration to former US Attorney General Sally Yates, fired by Trump after defying a travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries. It was also reported that Weissmann attended former Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's election party in November 2016.

In another revelation, Mueller's "right-hand man" investigator Aaron Zebley was found to have acted as an attorney for an IT staffer, who installed Clinton's email private servers and destroyed her old Blackberry phones. The report by Fox News raised more questions about the independence of the former FBI director's investigative machine.

This is essentially what they did with Flynn. They have the communications (obtained in a manner most politely termed "shady"), then try to catch you in a lie about things they already know about. If Mueller has any self-respect or concern for his credibility, he won't use the same dirty trick twice.

UPDATE - 12/17/2017: The Mueller office responded to Langhofer's accusation:

Special counsel Robert Mueller's office on Sunday defended its work after a lawyer for President Trump's transition team accused investigators of improperly obtaining thousands of emails from transition officials.

"When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner's consent or appropriate criminal process," Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel's office, said in a statement to The Hill.