July 29, 2018

As chief legal affairs anchor Dan Abrams rightfully pointed out on ABC's This Week, Robert Mueller has plenty of other crimes to investigate other than the straw man "collusion" Trump and his allies are constantly tossing out there and insisting he's not guilty of.

Here's Abrams shooting down Trump flack Chris Christie, turned ABC political "analyst," doing exactly that this Sunday:

RADDATZ: And, Governor Christie, Giuliani also fired what looks like a warning shot to Cohen, saying that Cohen has violated the attorney-client privilege both publicly and privately, and is in grave jeopardy of being disbarred. Is he trying to shut him up?

CHRISTIE: Well, listen, I'm sure that's part of the motivation for it. But, you know, Martha, let's remember, if you listen to your lead-in, there were four different ifs there. So part of what I think Dan is saying, and I agree with him, is that we don't even know -- none of this information, which came from one news report, has even been stated by Mr. Cohen or anybody on his legal team.

So we don't even know if the information that we're being given by that other outlet is even accurate. Now, if it is, and we've discussed this before, collusion is not a crime. And so the fact of the matter is that we're a long way away yet from having anything to talk about here.

Cohen still has to make a deal and that deal is probably not going to be with Bob Mueller. That deal is going to be with the Southern District of New York who are the people who are investigating him for potential crimes and the ones who initiated the raid of his office and hotel room and home.

So, Dan is right, we need to like -- everybody needs to take a step back here. And there's a certain level of hysteria that goes along with this story, the way it's reported, and quite frankly I don't think that what we know right now, what we know, merits that.

ABRAMS: But if you read, Martha, the indictments of the Russians so far, and I think that's really important in connection with this, you talk about what possible crimes could there be, you do have the possibility, in addition to any obstruction charge, of conspiracy to defraud the United States, which is a sort of big overreaching conspiracy charge that Mueller's team has already been using in connection with the Russians.

That's a real legal danger. On the question of the attorney-client privilege that Giuliani is talking about, I don't know exactly what he's talking about, meaning, when it comes to the tape that we've heard about, apparently Giuliani has waived attorney-client privilege.

On other conversations, for example, this notion that maybe Donald Trump knew about the meeting, well, apparently there were other people in the meeting. If there were other people there, there is no attorney-client privilege. It has to be a private conversation, not just with someone who broadly is your attorney, but a private conversation with someone who has been retained for this matter.

So if someone is your tax attorney, for example, and you talk to them about something criminal, it doesn't necessarily mean the attorney-client privilege applies. So I don't really know exactly what he's talking about.

RADDATZ: And, Governor Christie, I want to go back to these reports. If these reports are true, and CNN specifically reported that Cohen alleges that he was present along with several others, if you were Robert Mueller and you heard these reports, what would you do about it?

CHRISTIE: Well, two things. One, I'd try to do the best I could to get to the bottom of where the reports came from. But secondly, I can tell you, Martha, because as a U.S. attorney I had a deal with deciding whether to use cooperators all the time or not in a particular matter.

The fact that Cohen or someone on Cohen's behalf may be out there spewing out all this information into the public realm, whether it's the tape or now it's this alleged report of him being at a meeting, doesn't -- wouldn't make me very confident as a prosecutor that I'd want this guy and his legal team as a part of team America to be a witness on a case that I was bringing.

This is incredibly irresponsible stuff to be out there. It is not in Michael Cohen's best interests when he does not have a deal yet, as Dan noted, and I think it would give me as a prosecutor a lot of concern. And before I made any deal with either the U.S. attorney in the Southern District or Robert Mueller, there would be a long come-to-Jesus meeting with Michael Cohen and with his attorneys about from this moment forward if you have a deal, keep your mouth shut, because it doesn't help the prosecution to have all this information out there.

Why does ABC think anyone should care what this guy thinks in the first place?

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