Mueller Has ‘Tens Of Thousands’ Of E-mails, Trump Transition Team Sends Desperate Letter To Congress

Donald Trump has another problem.

According to Axios (who apparently got the scoop on this), Robert Mueller is in possession of  “many tens of thousands” of e-mails from the Trump transition. And guess whose e-mails are included in the stash? That’s right: Jared Kushner.

Axios’s sources claim Mueller “obtained the emails from the General Services Administration, the government agency that hosted the transition email system, which had addresses ending in ‘ptt.gov,’ for Presidential Transition Team.”

As you’re aware, figuring out exactly what went on with the transition team and discerning who said what to who and when is key for any number of reasons, some of which were made clear following Michael Flynn’s guilty plea. Under scrutiny are Jared Kushner’s alleged instructions involving communications with foreign governments and correspondence linked to deputy national security adviser KT McFarland.

Here’s Axios:

Why it matters: The transition emails are said to include sensitive exchanges on matters that include potential appointments, gossip about the views of particular senators involved in the confirmation process, speculation about vulnerabilities of Trump nominees, strategizing about press statements, and policy planning on everything from war to taxes.

“Mueller is using the emails to confirm things, and get new leads,” a transition source told Mike Allen.

Well just an hour (give or take) after that story hit, we get this (delivered via Fox News for maximum hysteria):

BREAKING NEWS: Trump transition team sends letter to lawmakers; claims Mueller team inappropriately obtained private documents. pic.twitter.com/fWAqEdnz09

— Fox News (@FoxNews) December 16, 2017

Ok, so that’s Fox, and here’s Reuters with the details:

An organization established for U.S. President Donald Trump’s transition to the White House a year ago said on Saturday that the special counsel investigating allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election had obtained tens of thousands of emails unlawfully.

Kory Langhofer, counsel to the transition team known as Trump for America, Inc., wrote a letter to congressional committees to say Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team had improperly received the emails from the General Services Administration, a government agency.

Career staff members at the agency “unlawfully produced TFA’s private materials, including privileged communications, to the Special Counsel’s Office,” according to the letter, a copy of which was seen by Reuters. It said the materials included “tens of thousands of emails.”

Hilariously, it looks like this only became apparent to Trump and co. after Mueller used the e-mails as the basis for questions posed to witnesses he interviewed.

The letter from Langhofer alleges that Mueller’s office knew the GSA didn’t own the records and then “extensively used the materials in question, including portions that are susceptible to claims of privilege” without telling the Trump for America team ahead of time. The transition teams, Langhofer claims, are “private, nonprofit organizations” and therefore, their records are not covered under the same laws.

So this is highly amusing and you can bet it’s going to trigger still more calls from Republicans for the investigation to be shut down and will likely provoke still more not-so-presidential tweets from Trump.

And maybe that’s the point – to stir up more anti-Mueller sentiment. Because it is by no means clear that Langhofer has a leg to stand on here and beyond that, this certainly seems to suggest that “someone” is extremely concerned about what’s in those e-mails.

Of course Mueller obtained emails from a third party. Prosecutors in most white collar criminal investigations do that. It’s not “inappropriate” or even unusual. Anyone who claims otherwise has no idea what they’re talking about. https://t.co/1JKNobvKJd

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 16, 2017

THREAD: Why are Trump’s lawyers upset that Mueller obtained transition emails from a government agency? (Hint: They’re just playing politics, but this is a bad sign for them.)

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 16, 2017