Mueller has obtained 'tens of thousands' of Trump transition team emails

Special counsel Robert Mueller has obtained thousands of emails from members of President Donald Trump's transition team.
An attorney representing the transition team claimed in a letter to Congress that Mueller unlawfully obtained the emails, but legal experts threw cold water on the allegation.
The emails could generate many new leads for Mueller and help him piece together key events that took place during the transition period.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is in possession of "many tens of thousands" of emails from President Donald Trump's transition team officials, sources told Axios on Saturday.

The emails reportedly include conversations about sensitive topics, such as potential appointments, the political views of senators involved in the confirmation process, and policy planning.

The special counsel obtained the emails from the General Services Administration, the federal government agency which hosted the transition team's email system.

Transition team officials reportedly assumed that Mueller would want to see some of the emails, which is why they separated out the ones they considered privileged. However, they only learned that Mueller had obtained all the emails from a third party when investigators questioned witnesses about their contents. Per Axios, Mueller's team has emails from 12 different accounts, one of which had about 7,000 emails.

"Mueller is using the emails to confirm things, and get new leads," one transition team source told Axios.

McFarland told the unnamed colleague in the emailobtained by the New York Timesthat the sanctions were aimed at delegitimizing Trump's election victory.

"If there is a tit-for-tat escalation Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown U.S.A. election to him," she wrote.

New leads

The emails could shed light on other critical events which took place during the transition period that have drawn Mueller's focus. They include Kushner's meeting with a Russian banker with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin; Kushner and Flynn's meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, during which Kushner reportedly asked to set up a secret back channel of communication between Trump and Russia; and Flynn's suggestion to a business associate that the new Russia sanctions would be "ripped up" under Trump.

The emails could also help investigators piece together more of what happened near the end of 2016 as it relates to Flynn's conversations with Kislyak — interactions he would later mislead FBI agents about during a January 24 interview.

Flynn pleaded guilty on December 1 to one count of making false statements to investigators about his contacts with Kislyak.

According to the US government’s statement of offense regarding Flynn, the former national security adviser was encouraged by key members of Trump’s transition team to communicate with Kislyak following Obama’s announcement of new sanctions against Russia.

The emails may also shed more light on what Trump knew about Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador, and when he knew it.

The White House said in February, after Flynn's departure, that Flynn was fired because he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Kislyak. It gave no indication that it knew he had lied to the FBI as well.

But Trump sent out a tweet on December 2 — the day after Flynn's charge was made public — which suggested that he had known at the time of Flynn's firing that had had misled the FBI, which is a federal crime. If he knew about Flynn's unlawful conduct, then his request to former FBI director James Comey that the bureau drop the Flynn investigation, and his subsequent decision to fire Comey, could significantly bolster the obstruction-of-justice case Mueller is said to be building against Trump.

Mariotti said on Saturday that while it wasn't unusual for prosecutors to obtain documents from third parties, as Mueller's office did with the Trump transition team's emails, it was unusual that Mueller asked the GSA for the communications as opposed to lawyers representing the transition team.

Prosecutors typically get as many documents as possible from defense lawyers because they "

Mueller has obtained 'tens of thousands' of Trump transition team emails

New leads

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