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Mueller team defends obtaining Trump transition emails
Opinion: Jimmy Kimmel is right. Kids' health should beat tax cuts
Trump transition accuses Mueller of 'unlawfully' obtaining emails
Story highlights
- The transition maintains the documents were its property and should not have been handed over without its approval
- The emails in question involve 13 transition officials, including four senior ones, according to the letter
Washington (CNN)Lawyers
representing the Trump presidential transition wrote to members of
Congress accusing special counsel Robert Mueller of obtaining
unauthorized access to tens of thousands of transition emails, including
what they claim to be documents protected by attorney-client privilege.
The
transition maintains the emails, which were on a government domain,
were its property and should not have been handed over without its
approval.
The emails in question involve 13 transition officials, including four senior ones, according to the letter.
The
lawyer, Kory Langhofer, wrote to leaders of the Senate Homeland
Security and House Oversight and Government Reform committees because he
said the General Services Administration, which supports presidential
transitions, "unlawfully produced" private materials of the transition
although the GSA "did not own or control the records in question."
Langhofer wrote in the letter that the Special Counsel's Office "was actively using those materials without any notice" to transition officials.
The
letter states there were two other occasions where the Special
Counsel's Office did not notify transition officials that their records
had been requested or received.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, responded to the accusations early Sunday.
"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," Carr said.
GSA
Deputy Counsel Lenny Loewentritt disputed a claim by Langhofer that the
GSA's general counsel had agreed in June that any requests for
transition records would go to the Trump campaign, BuzzFeed News reported Saturday night.
Loewentritt
said transition officials were told that "in using our devices,"
materials "would not be held back in any law enforcement" requests. He
added there was a series of agreements between the transition and GSA
for using its goods and therefore there was no expectation of privacy.
Langhofer's
letter also states that Special Counsel's Office had obtained
transition laptops, cell phones and at least one iPad after the FBI
requested them of career GSA staff without a subpoena.
The
letter also says a representative of the Special Counsel's Office told
transition officials it did not recover any documents from that
hardware, but failed "to disclose the critical fact that ... the Special
Counsel's office had simultaneously received from the GSA tens of
thousands of emails."
"The
materials produced by the GSA to the Special Counsel's Office therefore
included materials protected by the attorney-client privilege, the
deliberative process privilege, and the presidential communications
privilege," the letter maintains.
Axios first reported the existence of the emails, and Fox News first reported the transition lawyer's letter.
The
transition lawyer is asking the members of Congress to act to protect
future presidential transitions from having "private records
misappropriated by government agencies, particularly in the context of
sensitive investigations intersecting with political motives."
Specifically, the lawyer is asking if future transitions receive request
or demand for documents it must provide notice to transition officials
and an opportunity to respond.
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