Rahel Maddow shattered whatever shred of hope Donald Trump had left that the seized Michael Cohen documents would be protected under so-called attorney-client privilege.
The MSNBC host said on Monday that prosecutors are allowed to examine nearly 100 percent of what the FBI seized in the raids of Cohen’s offices in April.
“If there is anything in those documents for Michael Cohen to worry about or the president to worry about, they are going to need something else to rely on,” Maddow said, as the attorney-client argument disintegrated into thin air.
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Maddow has some bad news for Trump regarding the seized Michael Cohen documents. #Maddow #Trump #Cohen #ctl #p2 pic.twitter.com/FGS5aYdABt
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) June 5, 2018
Maddow said:
So in that case in terms of electronic items from Michael Cohen’s phones and his iPad, prosecutors are going to get to look at more than 99 1/2% of those items that they seized. 98% of the hard copy docs, 99 1/2% of the electronic docs. If there is anything the president has to worry about in terms of his relationship with and his working history with Michael Cohen over the years, any plan that he and Michael Cohen might have had that they were going to rely on attorney-client privilege to keep all the relevant materials out of the hands of prosecutors, that appears to have been poor planning. If there is anything in those documents for Michael Cohen to worry about or the president to worry about, they are going to need something else to rely on.
Donald Trump should be terrified
For a while, it seemed that Michael Cohen and Donald Trump were working under the assumption that they had nothing to fear because attorney-client privilege protected the documents seized during the FBI raids.
Of course, this has never been the case. Attorney-client privilege does not protect potentially criminal behavior. On Monday that was confirmed.
As Maddow said, Trump better find another plan because the floodgates just opened. Investigators are about to pore over nearly all of Cohen’s documents.
And if there is one person who has documents Trump doesn’t want investigators to see, it’s Michael Cohen.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
