Harmeet Dhillon Appears on Fox Business’ “The Evening Edit” To Discuss Michael Cohen, Wiretapping
According to Dhillon:
Well, I think It is too early to say whether or not it was illegal, at least for me I don’t have all the details, but what we do have this coming in the setting of evidence that the same people involved in these DOJ investigations have sought warrants to wiretap people thought the FISA court that were not truthful with the court about all the circumstances, and you know, it is really the same FBI and DOJ individuals who have been getting involved in getting this particular set of search warrants. And we have known, for example, that Michael Cohen’s e-mails had been intercepted, and so it’s not surprising that there is a wiretap order as well. But the real question is, what was the court told in order to get subpoena in order to get that wiretapping, in order to get that warrant, rather. But it is true that the court requires prosecutors to take great care and not intercept attorney-client communications, unless there is already evidence of an attorney-client exception, relating to a crime, and that has not been alleged yet in this case. So if it is true, that the president’s or somebody close to president on his behalf communications with his lawyer had been intercepted that is a very serious matter.
I think Rudy Giuliani already has addressed this issue. Some people said have maybe he went on Hannity show last night, and had a slip of the tongue? No, I think that Rudy Giuliani knows what he is doing, and that was thought out carefully. Obviously, when you are making a payment like this to settle a disputed claim, I do as a lawyer on behalf of my clients all of the time, you don’t want to be talking about it publicly. So, that’s one point, and now they have to do it because of all the storm of controversy around it. But number two, it is entirely plausible somebody of the net worth of the president would not know details of settlements like this. I am sure it not necessarily only settlement he has been affiliated with Michael Cohen for many years, and so it’s a rounding error for somebody who is really wealthy, this amount of money, I know it may seem like a lot to most Americans, but in the grand scheme of things, people who are this wealthy routinely are shaken down, routinely are approached with these types of threats, and routinely make the calculation that regardless of the merits of these types of claims, it is better economically, and better for their peace of mind and their family’s sake to resolve them privately. So, we know about stormy Daniels is a person that cannot be trusted because she breached that agreement.
No, so first of all, I would reject the characterization that somebody must be lying. If I were taking depositions, I would ask quite a few follow-up questions, so the way that Rudy Giuliani described this was that there were payments made in the form of retainers of some amount of money every month, I think he said $35,000. So, that’s different than a check for $130,000 being written to Michael Cohen to reimburse him, but that isn’t inconsistent with reimbursement having been made.
Well, I just addressed that. So, I think there is a difference between getting $130 thousand check that is a direct, exact amount, and retainer payments, which is how Giuliani described it. Again, you are dealing with lawyers here, and I’m sure the language was thought about very carefully before each of these two gentlemen got into the details. You know, it is always awkward when you are a lawyer being asked to describe the details of your interactions with your client. Lawyers try to be very circumspect about that, and so, and lawyer would be put in a very difficult position to answer those questions. So without some further follow up on, I don’t think that anyone could conclude there was a lie told here by either of them.
First, for 70 subpoenas, we don’t know what it means because the story just broke a few minutes ago. I’ve seen the cover page of the request by the special prosecutor, but generally speaking you have to get a court to issue a subpoena for a trial appearance and the date indicated is that the prosecutor wants people, individuals, to come to court in a date in July to testify at the trial. It also says, there is a reference in the news reports about 35 sets of subpoenas, so it could be that there is a request for two separate hearing dates, and with respect to they are walking back wiretapping claims, who are they? We don’t know who they are? We don’t know where these leaks are coming from? And we don’t know whether people are saying that people are doing what they weren’t supposed to do just because they have been caught out in doing it. But, I would need a lot more information and so should your viewer before you reach any conclusions about whether calls were simply monitored as to a call occurred versus the contents of a call being listened to and who was on other side of the call on at White House. I think these are all questions we don’t know as of yet.
