A double standard was at play in the FBI's raid of the office of Donald Trump's lawyer but not Bill Clinton's. A popular meme in March 2019 questioned why Bill Clinton had “paid Paula Jones $850K to go away” yet the FBI hadn’t raided his lawyer’s office.
Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann said Clark was repeatedly "clobbered over the head" during the meeting. He said that he explicitly told Clark that he was breaking the law, according to his videotaped deposition with the committee, a clip of which was played on Thursday.
During a dramatic January 3, 2021, Oval Office meeting, Rosen, his then-deputy Richard Donoghue and the head of the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel all threatened to resign in protest, leading Trump to ultimately back away from the plan to install Clark as attorney general.
The search occurred on the day the Justice Department served subpoenas to people involved in the Trump campaign's push to organize a slate of fake electors to try to certify a Trump and not Joe Biden election victory.
Fifty-one-year-old New Yorker Michael Cohen has a law degree, but his past duties for Mr Trump were not typical attorney obligations.
The issue isn't just what happened - federal investigators reportedly collecting documents and related information about Mr Cohen's tax records, business dealings and six-figure payment to secure the silence of Daniels, an adult film star who says she had an affair with Mr Trump. It's also who is doing the investigating.
The FBI-conducted raid of Mr Cohen's property isn't a garden-variety search, either. Because Mr Cohen is the president's personal attorney, federal investigators had to comply with extra safeguards to avoid infringing on a client's right to confidential legal counsel.
During a meeting with his military advisers on Monday the president embarked on extended remarks about what he viewed as the impropriety of the Cohen search.
The raid is part of a probe into Mr Giuliani's dealings with Ukraine. His lawyer says he denies breaking the law. Before the 2020 presidential election Mr Giuliani led an effort to find incriminating information about Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine.
Mr Giuliani's lawyer, Robert Costello, called the searches "legal thuggery".
Mr Giuliani played a central role in the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Mr Biden and his son Hunter , who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm. He was also instrumental in the ousting of the former US ambassador to Ukraine, witnesses at Mr Trump's impeachment trial testified.
Hunter Biden is facing an unrelated criminal tax probe from the US Justice Department. Wednesday's search warrant does not imply criminality on the part of Mr Giuliani, but it signals a ramping up of the case into the former mayor.
Two Ukrainian-born men, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who helped Giuliani in those efforts were arrested in October 2019 and charged with illegally funneling large donations to a pro-Trump fundraising committee. - Legal thuggery' -.
The impeachment investigation into Trump revealed extensive involvement by Giuliani in Ukrainian affairs. He appeared to take part in a push by powerful Ukrainian business and political figures to have Trump remove the US ambassador, Masha Yovanovitch.
Federal investigators raided the New York apartment of former US president Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani early Wednesday as part of a probe into his dealings in Ukraine. Investigators with search warrants combed Giuliani's residence and a separate office, seizing electronic devices.
Giuliani, himself once a top New York prosecutor and then mayor of the city, was a personal lawyer for Trump when the president was impeached in December 2019 for seeking political help from Ukraine. Giuliani spent months trying to help Trump find dirt in Ukraine on election rival Joe Biden and Biden's son Hunter, during 2018-2020.
According to reports, the FBI and the Justice Department's prosecutor in New York had sought search warrants for Giuliani's phones last year, but were denied that while Trump remained in office, until January 20.