An out of control Trump claimed that Michael Cohen was not his lawyer, and he had nothing to do Cohen, which destroyed any attorney/client privilege that existed between Trump and Cohen.
Video:
Transcript:
Brian Kilmeade: Talk about Michael Cohen. Yesterday through his attorney he will be taking the fifth. What is your reaction to that being that you work with him for a couple decades as your attorney?
Trump: I do. A good person, Brian, you know Michael. Michael has been on your show a lot. Brian: We know. Michael is a good person. Let me tell you Michael is in business, he is really a businessman, a fairly big business as I understand it. I don’t know his business, but this doesn’t have to do with me. Michael is a businessman. He has got a business. He also practices law. I would say probably the big thing is his business and they’re looking something having to do with his business. I have nothing to do with his business I can tell you. He is a good guy —
Kilmeade: Isn’t his business your attorney, Mr. President? I have many attorneys. I have attorneys, sadly I have so many attorneys you wouldn’t even believe it. But Michael is somebody — Steve: Mr. President, how much of your legal work was handled by Michael Cohen? A percentage of my overall legal work, a tiny, tiny little fraction but Michael would represent me and represent me on some things. He represents me like with this crazy stormy Daniels deal, he represented me. See, he did absolutely nothing wrong. There were no campaign fund —
Trump pretending not to know his own attorney has legal consequences
By disavowing Cohen as his attorney on anything but the Stormy Daniels matter, Trump is telling federal investigations that whatever communications that they may have between Trump and Cohen outside of Daniels are not covered by attorney/client privilege. Since Cohen is not a member of the administration, the communications are not covered by executive privilege. Trump was unhinged and clearly worked up during the Fox and Friends interview. He also blew his own legal defense to bits.
New York prosecutors used Trump’s comments to speed up the review of the seized documents:
There you go: NY prosecutors cite Trump comments on Fox this am that Cohen did “a tiny, tiny little fraction” of his legal work as reason to expedite review of seized documents pic.twitter.com/qtkOIl7yFn
— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) April 26, 2018
Trump can’t stop digging his own grave, and he may have given prosecutors exactly what they wanted because he just had to talk to his friends on Fox.
For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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