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Special Counsel Robert Mueller has obtained “many tens of thousands" of Trump transition emails, including emails of Jared Kushner, transition team sources tell Axios.
* Trump officials discovered Mueller had the emails when his prosecutors used them as the basis for questions to witnesses, the sources said.
* The emails include 12 accounts, one of which contains about 7,000 emails, the sources said.
* The accounts include the team's political leadership and the foreign-policy team, the sources said.
The twist: The sources say that transition officials assumed that Mueller would come calling, and had sifted through the emails and separated the ones they considered privileged. But the sources said that was for naught, since Mueller has the complete cache from the dozen accounts.
Kory Langhofer, the counsel to Trump for America, wrote in Saturday's letter that the GSA handed over “tens of thousands of emails” to Mueller's probe without "any notice" to the transition.
The attorney said they discovered the “unauthorized disclosures” by the GSA on December 12th and 13th and raised concerns with the special counsel’s office.
“We understand that the special counsel’s office has subsequently made extensive use of the materials it obtained from the GSA, including materials that are susceptible to privilege claims,” Langhofer writes.
The transition attorney said the special counsel's office also received laptops, cell phones and at least one iPad from the GSA.
originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: Vasa Croe
It looks to me like the Trump people reached out to these media outlets. They both received copies of the letter that was sent today to these two committees. Now it's possible that the information was leaked by members of Congress (they do seem to have problems keeping secrets) but anonymous transition team sources are being quoted as well.
If Team Trump did call up friendly outlets to break this story (which is what I suspect), what would be the purpose of doing it at all if it's of no importance? Why not just let it come out on Monday?
Also, while there's been innuendo, talk of potential bias and the perception of impropriety, this is an actual allegation of the Mueller team doing something improper.
originally posted by: theantediluvian
This must be important to be breaking on a Saturday evening. Looks like Axios and Fox both raced to publish exclusives about 3 hours ago.
Scoop: Mueller obtains "tens of thousands” of Trump transition emails
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has obtained “many tens of thousands" of Trump transition emails, including emails of Jared Kushner, transition team sources tell Axios.
* Trump officials discovered Mueller had the emails when his prosecutors used them as the basis for questions to witnesses, the sources said.
* The emails include 12 accounts, one of which contains about 7,000 emails, the sources said.
* The accounts include the team's political leadership and the foreign-policy team, the sources said.
The twist: The sources say that transition officials assumed that Mueller would come calling, and had sifted through the emails and separated the ones they considered privileged. But the sources said that was for naught, since Mueller has the complete cache from the dozen accounts.
According to the both the sources for the Axios article above and the Fox News piece, the emails were obtained from the GSA (General Services Administration) which provided the transition team office space and hosted it's email servers. It appears that they may have also provided hardware based on statements in the Fox News piece.
Trump transition lawyer: Mueller improperly obtained documents in Russia probe
Kory Langhofer, the counsel to Trump for America, wrote in Saturday's letter that the GSA handed over “tens of thousands of emails” to Mueller's probe without "any notice" to the transition.
The attorney said they discovered the “unauthorized disclosures” by the GSA on December 12th and 13th and raised concerns with the special counsel’s office.
“We understand that the special counsel’s office has subsequently made extensive use of the materials it obtained from the GSA, including materials that are susceptible to privilege claims,” Langhofer writes.
The transition attorney said the special counsel's office also received laptops, cell phones and at least one iPad from the GSA.
Team Trump is not happy and transition lawyer Langhofer is calling it a violation of the 4th Amendment. Langhofer's office sent a 7-page letter to the Senate Homeland Security and House Oversight Committees and I'm guessing provided it to both Axios and Fox News (and I'd imagine others).
The Office of the Special Counsel reportedly declined to comment.
That Team Trump reached out to right-wing media to break this story tonight could suggest something major on the horizon, perhaps as soon as Monday. Hopefully Russian hackers will get a hold of everything and leak it through WikiLeaks. Amirite?
If Team Trump did call up friendly outlets to break this story (which is what I suspect), what would be the purpose of doing it at all if it's of no importance?
Lastly, where oh where is the search warrant and when was it served. Oops.
where oh where is the search warrant and when was it served. Oops.
originally posted by: Vasa Croe
a reply to: theantediluvian
Being released on a Saturday tells me it's really of no importance.
originally posted by: Liquesence
Then why the sudden rush to discredit it as "illegally obtained" if it's of such little importance?
Damage control.
originally posted by: Vasa Croe
originally posted by: whywhynot
a reply to: Vasa Croe
I think that Fox got a scoop and they raced to release it. The first of next week should be interesting for a couple different reasons.
Fox doesn't need a scoop...And even if they got a big one they wouldn't run it on a saturday.....
originally posted by: WhatTheory
originally posted by: Liquesence
Then why the sudden rush to discredit it as "illegally obtained" if it's of such little importance?
Damage control.
What rush? If you read the story, it's fairly clear that no warrant/subpoena was issued for the information, hence the illegal claim. It's not very difficult.
originally posted by: Liquesence
The rush to discredit by claiming it was "illegaly obtained" when it was obtained in part from public government servers and also part of an active criminal investigation and people already being investigated.