MUELLER AND ROSENSTEIN LAUNCH POLICE STATE

The Death of Attorney-Client Privilege

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By Louis Manzo / April 2018

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Welcome to the American Police State.
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Whether you are a Trump supporter or hater, or you simply don’t care; YOU MUST PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT IS HAPPENING AT THE TOP LEVELS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE—it might serve to strip you of a fundamental due process guarantee: the attorney-client privilege.
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If Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s latest tactic of going after the lawyers of their targets holds legal muster, then this basic fundamental of due process is dead. No longer will clients reliably confide in their lawyers, and no longer will attorneys be able to give confidential advice to their clients, without the guarantee that such informational exchanges cannot be monitored by government prosecutors. The Fourth and Sixth Amendments of the United States Constitution protects the privacy of attorney-client privilege that Mueller and Rosenstein are hoping to kick to the curb.
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The Department of Justice has never sought the privileged materials between any American President and his lawyer, EVER—and that includes Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. Should this intrusion of Constitutional guarantees stand, it opens the door for another prosecutor on another day to threaten other Constitutional protections typically standing in the way of prosecutions—such as protections and shield laws provided for protecting reporters and their sources and to priests and their confessors. Attorney-client privilege is only the first step on this slippery slope.
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Since beginning this blog, I have warned and cautioned its readers about the greatest threat to our system of justice—egotistical and corrupt prosecutors who are willing to sellout their offices to champion political agendas. They are now abundant in the Department of Justice, and at the highest levels of power within the department. I have already lived through what such a nightmare portends—the Bid Rig III Sting of 2009. Prosecutions used to achieve political agendas remains a tool of corrupt American politics.
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The stretch of the law that Mueller and Rosenstein are now relying on, in their nearly yearlong search to prove collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, is the referral of a potential campaign finance violation to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Southern Manhattan—such violations are typically processed through the Federal Election Commission. There are also the hopes of the prosecutors for being able to sniff out mischief in Cohen’s handling of Trump’s business matters before he was elected President.
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One premise being floated is that the money which Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, used to compensate porn star Stormy Daniels for a legally bound contract to buy her silence, can be construed as an in-kind campaign contribution—since the government might allege that Stormy’s silence benefitted the Trump campaign. But what if Stormy’s silence was purchased to protect the Trump marriage?
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Alike the Bid Rig III sting, prosecutors are trying to piggyback a campaign financing violation onto a criminal fraud statute, in order to make a mountain out of a molehill—transforming the minor campaign finance violation into a major crime with a hefty prison sentence. What a federal judge in dismissing a similar tactic in Bid Rig III charges referred to as “legal alchemy.” And, while a so-called team of ‘neutral prosecutors’ pour over the attorney-client privileged materials, they will determine what the prosecutors who hired them get to see. Before the week was out, there were already leaks concerning these confidential materials, as well as lawsuits filed to preserve attorney-client privilege in the matter.
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The team of spies working for the prosecutors will also forward back to Mueller any matters related to collusion or obstruction of justice that they mine from President Trump and Cohen’s privileged interactions. That is probably the true motivation for the Mueller referral, since after a year of investigating the President with the most conflicted and ethically challenged team of prosecutors perhaps ever assembled, Mueller still has nothing to show for in proving collusion or obstruction. The Southern District of New York’s USAO investigation now provides him with the means to make an end-run around DOJ guidelines designed to limit the scope of the Special Counsel’s ability to probe.
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Constitutional experts, such as Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, have condemned the raid on Trump’s lawyer’s office as a violation of the Fourth and Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution and suggested tougher laws for protecting attorney-client privilege. Rosenstein went out on the limb to state that nothing involved in the Southern District of New York United States Attorney’s Office probe is targeting Trump. That’s an outright lie and insiders know it—how could anyone make such a statement without any of the subpoenaed material having yet been scrutinized by the spies that the prosecutors hired? This statement was meant to appease the American public, which it now appears is beginning to grow tiresome and skeptical of the seemingly never-ending probe of the President by the Special Counsel, that also distracts from the issues that they want their government focused on.
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Other leaks from the DOJ also indicate that Cohen is solely under investigation for his business transactions. If true, then why scoop up the privileged material between the President and his lawyer? The DOJ has defended its position by claiming that no court would issue a warrant for the materials if the evidence of criminal activity wasn’t obvious. Sound familiar? This is the same DOJ that knowingly used a phony dossier constructed by a former British spy which was paid for, in part, by the Democratic National Committee in order to dupe a United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge into issuing a surveillance warrant on key personnel in the Trump campaign. They then attempted to illegally influence the Judge who signed off on the warrant, and who later was forced to recuse himself. This matter is about to blowup in the face of the Department of Justice in May. Expect criminal indictments related to this gross abuse of authority and power.
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Attorneys for Trump and Cohen have since filed court motions seeking to uphold the attorney-client privilege. If they do not succeed, then expect prosecutors around the country to begin citing this case as support for asking other courts for the permission to grab confidential information shared by other Americans with their attorneys, should they be the targets of a prosecution.
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Rod Rosenstein will ultimately be the one who pays the piper for this affront to due process. If Trump’s and Cohen’ legal teams prevail in preserving the attorney-client privilege, Rosenstein may be fired on the spot by Trump, and deservingly so! If not, then expect Rosenstein to be fired after the Inspector General’s report regarding the FISA warrant and the Clinton aborted criminal investigation is released—Rosenstein figured prominently in both matters.
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Back in the 1970’s the Church Committee’s Congressional hearings exposed abuses and criminal conduct at the top levels of the Department of Justice. Those abuses led to amendments passed by Congress in 1976 to the already existing Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. One of those provisions led to the restriction of a ten-year term for the FBI Director—largely predicated by the conduct and abuses of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
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Perhaps that law now needs to be expanded to cover more top-level positions at the Department of Justice and for United States Attorney’s Offices. Apparently, the longer that one holds the power, the easier it becomes for the power to corrupt. Incidentally, only one FBI Director has since received a carve out around the law restricting the ten-year service limit—his name was Robert Mueller.