Don’t faint you guys, but it seems that Fox News might be … LYING! Yes, we know it is a blow, but try to hold it together. This weekend, Kory Langhofer, the highly extremely reputable lawyer for Trump for America, sent a letter to Congress complaining that Robert Mueller had illegally accessed the Trump transition team’s emails hosted on government servers. But rather than file a motion in court to have the documents excluded, he leaked the letter to Fox, as one does when one has a VERY GOOD LEGAL CASE.
Just kidding! Langhofer is totally full of shit, like we told you Sunday.
But that didn’t stop Fox News’s Gregg Jarrett, an IRL lawyer, from leading the pitchfork brigade in a rousing chorus of LOCK MUELLER UP!
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is accused of acting in complete disregard for the law and must be removed. And so, too, must his entire team.
There is devastating new evidence to suggest that Mueller and his staff of lawyers improperly, if not illegally, obtained tens of thousands of private documents belonging to President-elect Trump’s Presidential Transition Team (PTT).
Jarrett cited cases and statutes, because he is a very serious official law person with white dude gravitas. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddlesome youngsters on Legal Twitter!
BUSTED!
Jarrett started off by insisting that a letter from an Obama administration official made the Trump transition team emails private as a matter of law.
On November 16, 2016, roughly ten days after Trump was elected president, the Chief Records Officer of the U.S. Government sent a letter to all federal agencies reminding them that “the materials that PTT members create or receive are not Federal or Presidential records, but are considered private materials.”
Did we forget a verse from School House Rock’s “I’m Just a Bill” where they sing, “If they sign me or if an outgoing official from the prior administration sends a letter, then I’ll be a law”? Because we are pretty sure that’s not how it works. Besides which, as Buzzfeed reported, transition team members were explicitly warned that the GSA would turn their communications over in a criminal investigation.
Specifically, [acting head of GSA Lenny] Loewentritt said, “in using our devices,” transition team members were informed that materials “would not be held back in any law enforcement” actions.
Loewentritt read to BuzzFeed News a series of agreements that anyone had to agree to when using GSA materials during the transition, including that there could be monitoring and auditing of devices and that, “Therefore, no expectation of privacy can be assumed.”
But those are facts, and this is Fox. Take it away, Gregg!
Courts have clearly stated what prosecutors are supposed to do under these circumstances: “An attorney who receives privileged documents has an ethical duty to cease review of the documents, notify the privilege holder, and return the documents.” (U.S. v. Taylor 764 Fed Sup 2nd, 230, 235)
O RLY?
Okay, in all fairness, a lawyer who mistakenly receives privileged information is obligated to return or destroy it. But that quote doesn’t come from the case cited. This one does, though.
Accordingly, I conclude that the defendant has no basis for excluding the seized evidence beyond the privileged e-mails, and they have not been provided to the investigating agent or the prosecuting AUSA. The defendant’s motion to suppress is therefore Denied.
To the limited extent that U.S. v. Taylor is relevant, the court held that all the non-privileged emails are kosher, even if the privileged ones are excluded. Neither Langhofer nor Jarrett has ever described what privilege was violated — attorney-client, executive, white? But whatever they have in mind, this case doesn’t support it.
Gregg Jarrett would never make shit up, though, right? Must be a mistake. Let’s see what other entirely rational and not at all fallacious arguments he’s got for us.
The use by Mueller of even one privileged document can, and must, result in his disqualification from the case.
The case of Finn v. Schiller, 72 F.3rd 1182, 1189 spells out the required remedy for this violation of the law: “Courts have frequently used their supervisory authority to disqualify prosecutors for obtaining materials protected by the attorney-client privilege.”
Oh must it? It “must” result in Mueller being disqualified?
Wait, so he quoted a plaintiff’s brief from some Florida District Court case in 2017, but claimed it came from a 1996 decision by the 4th Circuit? REALLY??? Gregg, maybe dial back on the Botox a little bit, dude. Not for nothing, but we’re a bit worried that needle is going into your brain.
Jarrett’s crack legal scholarship leads him to the inevitable conclusion that everyone involved in the Russia investigation must be immediately fired, including Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein. To wit, Jarrett cites controlling caselaw from the November 7, 2011, episode of The People’s Court. (Probably.) Also, if the glove does not fit, you must acquit.
We’re sure Robert Mueller is just shaking in his boots.
Please money us this week! It will bring you luck AND SPLAINERS in the coming year!
[Fox / Buzzfeed / Finn v. Schiller / US v. Taylor / US v. Esformes, Plaintiff’s Memorandum of Law]
