RUTHFULLY YOURS

If there was any doubt that Robert Mueller’s Ahab-like goal is the unseating of President Trump at all costs and by any means, it was erased by the thuggish FBI raid he orchestrated on the home and office of Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen.

Can’t find any collusion between Trump and Russia? Hey, why not look for collusion between Cohen and professional whore and porn star Stormy Daniels? Was she paid to go away with campaign funds? Even so, that’s an FEC violation punishable by a fine and something that does not require a SWAT team.

It certainly does not compare with money funneled by Team Hillary and the DNC though a law firm to Fusion GPS and British foreign agent Christopher Steele to put together a fake dossier on Trump using Russian sources. But where were the raids on the offices of the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and Fusion GPS?

This is the FBI of Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok, whose mission was to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison and Donald Trump out of the White House. They never raided the home and office of Cheryl Mills, did they? They never raided Hillary’s house or seized the acid-washed server, did they? But Michael Cohen is a threat to our democracy warranting brute force? Why wasn’t Michel Cohen offered the immunity deal given to Cheryl Mills and other Clinton cronies:

The FBI gave partial immunity to Hillary Clinton’s former State Department chief of staff Cheryl Mills and two other staffers during the investigation of Clinton’s private e-mail server, according to a member of Congress.

When you stretch the law to “get” a political opponent, it’s rarely possible to return the law to its original shape. Which brings us to Stormy Daniels.

Shortly before the 2016 election, one of President Trump’s lawyers, Michael Cohen, arranged a $130,000 payment to the porn star in return for silence about a 2006 affair she claimed to have had with Mr. Trump. (Both the president and Mr. Cohen have denied the affair; Mr. Trump has said he did not know of the payment to Ms. Daniels until this February.)

Not satisfied with an old-fashioned sex scandal—perhaps because the president seems impervious to that—some want to turn this into a violation of campaign-finance law. Trevor Potter, a former member of the Federal Election Commission told “60 Minutes” the payment was “a $130,000 in-kind contribution by Cohen to the Trump campaign, which is about $126,500 above what he’s allowed to give.” The FBI raided Mr. Cohen’s office, home and hotel room Monday. They reportedly seized records related to the payment and are investigating possible violations of campaign-finance laws.

But let’s remember a basic principle of such laws: Not everything that might benefit a candidate is a campaign expense.

Campaign-finance law aims to prevent corruption. For this reason, the FEC has a longstanding ban on “personal use” of campaign funds. Such use would give campaign contributions a material value beyond helping to elect the candidate—the essence of a bribe.

FEC regulations explain that the campaign cannot pay expenses that would exist “irrespective” of the campaign, even if it might help win election. At the same time, obligations that would not exist “but for” the campaign must be paid from campaign funds.

If paying hush money is a campaign expense, a candidate would be required to make that payment with campaign funds. How ironic, given that using campaign funds as hush money was one of the articles of impeachment in the Watergate scandal, which gave rise to modern campaign-finance law. CONTINUE AT SITE

The FBI raid Monday on lawyer Michael Cohen raises the political and legal stakes in the vast prosecutorial investigation into Donald J. Trump. The probe into allegations of Trump campaign collusion with Russia has careened into a dive into the dumpster of a payoff to a porn actress to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Mr. Trump. This is the way of special prosecutors, and Washington now seems headed toward a fight-to-the-end between the President and his enemies.

The press is reporting that Mr. Cohen is being investigated for possible bank fraud and campaign-finance violations in connection to his $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels (née Stephanie Clifford ) in October 2016. Mr. Cohen said he made the payment as a personal favor for his friend and client, Mr. Trump.

But if the payment was intended to silence the actress to help Mr. Trump win the election, then it could be considered a campaign contribution that exceeded the donation limit in 2016. As Bradley Smith notes nearby, proving such a crime would be difficult, and former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards was acquitted in a similar case. But these days in politics anything can be criminalized.

The raid is especially notable, and troubling, for piercing the attorney-client relationship between Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump. That is a serious step legally, and it typically requires significant evidence to justify. It would also require the approval at senior levels of the Justice Department. The warrant came at the request of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan on a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller, who could use whatever information the raid generates.

The Fourth and Sixth Amendments prohibit government officials from in any way intruding on the privacy of lawyer/client confidential rights of citizens.

The very fact that this material is seen or read by a government official constitutes a core violation. It would be the same if the government surreptitiously recorded a confession of a penitent to a priest, or a description of symptoms by a patient to a doctor, or a discussion of their sex life between a husband and wife.

The recourses for intrusions on the Fourth and Sixth Amendments are multifold: the victim of the intrusion can sue for damages; he or she can exclude it from use by the government in criminal or civil cases; or the victim can demand the material back. But none of these remedies undo the harm to privacy and confidentiality done to the citizen by the government’s intrusion into his private and confidential affairs.

Many TV pundits are telling viewers not to worry about the government’s intrusion into possible lawyer/client privileged communications between President Trump and his lawyer, since prosecutors will not get to see or use any privileged material. This is because prosecutors and FBI agents create firewalls and taint teams to preclude privileged information from being used against the client in a criminal case. But that analysis completely misses the point and ignores the distinction between the Fifth Amendment on the one hand, and the Fourth and Sixth Amendments on the other.

The Fifth Amendment is an exclusionary rule. By its terms, it prevents material obtained in violation of the privilege of self-incrimination from being used to incriminate a defendant – that is to convict him of a crime. But the Fourth and Sixth Amendments provide far broader protections: they prohibit government officials from in any way intruding on the privacy of lawyer/client confidential rights of citizens. In other words, if the government improperly seizes private or privileged material, the violation has already occurred, even if the government never uses the material from the person from whom it was seized.