Congressman Ted Lieu shuts down Donald Trump’s attorneys
On Saturday evening the American public was surprised to learn that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has long secretly had possession of every single email sent and received by the Donald Trump transition team. Trump’s own people were surprised to learn this as well, as it means Mueller has been playing them all along. Trump’s attorneys tried to quickly fire back with a legal counterargument against the validity of the evidence, but as it turns out, that argument isn’t going anywhere.
Mueller secretly acquired the Trump transition emails several months ago from the General Services Administration. He then asked Trump’s people for copies of those same emails, leading them to believe that he didn’t have them. It was a trap, and they’ve been falling for it all along. Those emails make clear that several of Trump’s people were well aware of the conspiracy with the Russian Ambassador to sabotage President Obama’s sanctions. Instead of trying to dispute the importance of Mueller’s evidence, Trump’s attorneys took a different approach.
Trump’s legal team tried to make the argument on Saturday night that some of those emails were subject to executive privilege. This argument has largely been met with laughter by legal experts. Even Republican consultant Frank Luntz was quick to point out that most of the emails in question were from .gov addresses, making them public property. That’s when Congressman Ted Lieu, who was a JAG prosecutor in the Air Force, weighed in.
Ted Lieu tweeted “Courts generally unwilling to find reasonable right to privacy for .gov emails. Also, since Trump lawyers don’t know what leads Mueller is investigating, they won’t know which emails may be important. This seems like another desperate attempt to smear the Mueller investigation.” In other words, Donald Trump and his attorneys have little chance of convincing a judge to throw out Robert Mueller’s email evidence. In other words, Mueller probably has them nailed.
