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. . . According to Cohen's own lawyer, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (widely regarded within itself as being the most important and prestigious U.S. Attorney's Office in the country) secured the search warrants for the FBI, based on a referral from Robert Mueller's office. Assuming this report is correct, that means that a very mainstream U.S. Attorney's Office—not just Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office—thought that there was enough for a search warrant here . . . . . . (I)t's not just that the office thought that there was enough for a search warrant. They thought there was enough for a search warrant of an attorney's office for that attorney's client communications. That's a very fraught and extraordinary move that requires multiple levels of authorization within the Department of Justice . . .. . . A magistrate judge signed off on this. Federal magistrate judges (appointed by local district judges, not by the president) review search warrant applications. A magistrate judge therefore reviewed this application and found probable cause—that is, probable cause to believe that the subject premises (Cohen's office) contains specified evidence of a specified federal crime. Now, magistrate judges sometimes are a little too rubber-stampy for my taste (notably, recall the time that a magistrate judge signed off on a truly ludicrous gag order forbidding Reason from revealing that it had been served with a subpoena for information identifying commenters). But here, where the magistrate judge knew that this would become one of the most scrutinized search warrant applications ever, and because the nature of the warrant of an attorney's office is unusual, you can expect that the magistrate judge felt pretty confident that there was enough there . . .. . . It's early times. Watch for the search warrant itself—that will show us what crimes they are investigating and what documents they think are probative of that crime. Watch also for what Michael Cohen's lawyers do in the struggle to compel arbitration with Stormy Daniels in a federal court in Los Angeles—the search warrant dramatically complicates whether Cohen can, or should, submit to any questions in that case. Be skeptical of the surge of misinformation and inaccurate legal takes that are certain to drop. But watch. This is historic.
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Topic: Feds Raid Office of Trump Lawyer Who Paid Off Stormy Daniels. This Is a Big Deal. (Read 378 times)
