This letter is beyond stupid. Mueller got emails from the GSA because they were on the GSA’s server. The government obtained the emails from itself. The 4th Amendment does not come into play at all. https://t.co/IELEzgU28M
— Dan Barr (@DanCBarr) December 17, 2017
One lawyer thinks the Trump team’s criticism of Special Counsel Robert Mueller doesn’t hold water.
“This letter is beyond stupid,” tweeted attorney Dan Barr on Saturday. “Mueller got emails from the GSA because they were on the GSA’s server. The government obtained the emails from itself. The 4th Amendment does not come into play at all.”
Barr works for Perkins Coie, the law firm that retained Fusion GPS to do Trump opposition research on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign.
It was recently revealed that Mueller’s investigators obtained emails from accounts in the Trump transition team. In response, an attorney for the transition team wrote congress, saying the General Services Administration, a federal agency, illegally handed over these messages.
“When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process,” Mueller spokesman Peter Carr told Law&Crime in an emailed statement.
A former White House attorney also shared his thoughts on the email fight. Norm Eisen, who worked in the Obama administration, laid it out like this:
I was the Deputy GC of a Transition (Obama-Biden 08). I warned everyone: there is NO expectation of privacy in your transition emails. The clue: emails are “[email protected].” The whining letter from the Trump Transition tacitly admits this: it ends by asking for a legislative fix https://t.co/RfBJPSMmlt
— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) December 17, 2017
Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, and whether the Trump campaign helped out. The president has called claims of these alleged ties a “witch hunt” by Democrats.
[Screengrab via CNN]
