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Michael Cohen testified Monday he secretly recorded Donald Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 election, discussing plans to buy a Playboy model’s story about having an affair with the then-candidate. Cohen — who worked for Trump for more than a decade — told jurors in Manhattan Court that the Sept. 6, 2016, conversation, taped on the Voice Memos app on his iPhone, was the only time he surreptitiously recorded his former boss. “So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Trump could allegedly be heard saying on the nearly three-minute recording played in court by Assistant District...

Revelations of the sheer number of FBI informants involved in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot have shaken a trial of members of the Proud Boys in Washington, DC, as one FBI informant had infiltrated the defense team. As Julie Kelly, who has covered the January 6 trials extensively, reports, there are at least ten informants now known to have been involved in the Proud Boys — more than twice the five defendants who are on trial. One shocking revelation last week was that one FBI informant, Jen Loh, a member of Latinos for Trump, had been in close contact...

Justice Department prosecutors asked a federal judge to compel one of Trump's lawyers to testify Fox News host Mark Levin tore into special counsel Jack Smith for going after former President Trump's right to attorney-client privilege. Justice Department prosecutors on Tuesday asked a federal judge to compel one of Trump's lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran, to answer more questions before a grand jury regarding the former president's handling of classified documents. Prosecutors cited the crime-fraud exception as a way to circumvent the attorney-client privilege. This exception, Levin said, is used if prosecutors believe a client is seeking advice from an attorney...

Federal prosecutors are trying to compel the lawyer of former President Donald Trump to testify before the grand jury, citing the “crime fraud” exception to circumvent attorney-client privilege. They cannot beat Trump, so they need to shred legal frameworks considered sacrosanct to find anything that could lead to an indictment. This order comes from the special counsel reviewing the allegations that Donald Trump mishandled classified information, which shouldn’t be going near this since it could lead to Mr. Biden being slapped with similar charges. At least, that’s what’s logical (via NBC News): "The special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s handling of...

Former President Trump's request to appoint a special master to review the documents taken by the FBI in their raid on his Mar-a-Lago residence was rejected by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on the grounds that it is now moot. DOJ attorneys explained that "the whole point of a neutral party serving as a special master is to protect the suspect's attorney-client confidentiality from being exposed to the prosecutors. However, as Attorney General Merrick Garland has admitted, the FBI has already read all the documents—including the privileged communications between Trump and his lawyers. We know everything. There is nothing...

September 2nd, 2022 On Friday’s Mark Levin Show, why did former AG Bill Barr stay with the Trump Administration as long as he did if Trump was as bad as he said he was? Barr erroneously assumes that the appointment of a Special Master for the FBI raid is a red herring when the issue at hand is the protection of privilege or one’s fourth amendment right. If privilege simply didn’t matter then it wouldn’t be part of the Presidential Records Act.

Some of the documents seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago were protected by attorney-client privilege, according to a new report. At least five of the boxes taken during the raid are said to have contained protected documents. Fox News reports, “the former president’s team was informed that boxes labeled A-14, A-26, A-43, A-13, A-33, and a set of documents—all seen on the final page of the FBI’s property receipt —contained information covered by attorney-client privilege.” The sources who spoke to Fox explained that the Justice Department also opposed Trump lawyers’ request for the appointment of an independent, special master to...

Special counsel John Durham has issued trial subpoenas for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Fusion GPS, and Perkins Coie as he continues to prosecute his findings as special counsel, from which he charged cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann, who in 2016 represented the Clinton campaign, with lying to the FBI. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, the DNC, Washington-based private intelligence firm Fusion GPS, and law firm Perkins Coie, Sussmann’s former employer, meanwhile, are trying to fend off Durham’s efforts to compel them to hand over previously withheld documents. The campaign and Sussmann’s lawyers argue that attorney-client privilege should...

In a coordinated legal action between a number of Hillary Clinton operatives and associates, almost two dozen separate documents were simultaneously filed on April 19 in special counsel John Durham’s case against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. This sudden flurry of mass filings included responses from former Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, campaign manager Robby Mook, Clinton campaign lead lawyer Marc Elias, contractors Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign itself, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The trigger for the flurry of filings was a request by Durham to unseal a number of emails involving the parties. The emails are...

This cooked-up pretext to invade the president’s attorney-client privilege is a stain of shame on the rule of law and tramples on a 500-year-old rule that protects our common law tradition. The New York Times promised that today Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney, “will describe in what was called ‘granular detail’ the plan to pay Ms. Daniels, which he will say was initiated by Mr. Trump, the person familiar with the testimony plans said.” This, the Times rapturously promised, would provide, “evidence of potential criminal conduct since Mr. Trump became president.” As shown below, this cooked-up pretext to invade...

On Monday, the FBI raided offices of Michael Cohen, Esq. to get the lawyer’s records, all his client records, business records, memos to the file, etc. what happened yesterday is appalling. As working lawyers, most of us have within our files our own memos dealing with information on the private lives of husbands, wives, messy family disputes, with all kinds of claims and cross claims, in criminal; cases of defendants (guilty and innocent), corporate people (naughty and nice), etc. Everyone has a right to counsel and to exercise their attorney-client privilege, and everyone has a right to be honestly and...

For instance, a ruling declassified this month by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) chronicles nearly 10 pages listing hundreds of violations of the FBI’s privacy-protecting minimization rules that occurred on Comey’s watch. The behavior the FBI admitted to a FISA judge just last month ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight the bureau promised was in place years ago.

In the Land of the Free, people grow up hearing a lot of things about their freedom. You're told that you live in the freest country on the planet... ... This justice system is supposedly founded on bedrock principles-- things like a defendant being presumed innocent until proven guilty. The right to due process and an impartial hearing. The right to counsel and attorney-client privilege. ... 2. The concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' may officially exist in courts, but administratively it was thrown out long ago. These days there are hundreds of local, state, and federal agencies that can...

Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog, In the Land of the Free, people grow up hearing a lot of things about their freedom. You're told that you live in the freest country on the planet. You're told that other nations 'hate you' for your freedom. And you're told that you have the most open and fair justice system in the world. This justice system is supposedly founded on bedrock principles-- things like a defendant being presumed innocent until proven guilty. The right to due process and an impartial hearing. The right to counsel and attorney-client privilege. Yet each...

Should a lawyer be able to represent both a corporation and its employees? If a corporation’s executives and other employees can’t trust the company’s lawyer not to cooperate in their prosecution, how can anyone speak openly to that lawyer on behalf of the corporation? These, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers argued, were among the questions raised by the Third Circuit’s decision in United States v. Norris, which the Supreme Court this week declined to review. Morgan Crucible Co. had waived its attorney-client privilege as part of its cooperation with an antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice, and...

Bureau of Prisons can suspend attorney-client privileges One month after the 9/11 attacks, the Department of Justice issued an interim rule that gave its Bureau of Prisons the right to scrap traditional notions of attorney-client privilege in order to monitor conversations between inmates suspected of terrorism and their lawyers. Last month, the department announced that the final version of that rule, which will become effective on June 4, extends from four months to one year the time period during which such intrusive monitoring of those jailhouse conversations can take place. The final rule also extends the authority to impose such...

A bill under consideration by New Hampshire legislators would require Catholic priests and other religious figures to divulge any information they hear regarding child abuse, even if told to them by parishioners in the private act of "confession." According to the Concord Monitor newspaper, the Granite State currently has a statute requiring anyone in the state who suspects child abuse to report it to authorities. The Child Protection Act, enacted in 1979, also places a mandatory reporting requirement on clergy. However, the paper said, a separate statute exempts clergymen and women from having to provide court testimony regarding anything told...

Four associates of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, including his American lawyer, were indicted Tuesday on charges of helping the "blind sheik" conduct terrorism from his prison cell. In announcing the indictment, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Abdel Rahman was "a leader of the designated terrorist organization the Islamic Group." Ashcroft said Islamic Group was affiliated with al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization believed to have orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks. Monitoring Attorney-Client Discussions The attorney general said he was invoking, for the first time, a Justice Department policy allowing officials to monitor attorney-client conversations, if department officials believed the conversations were being...