information that we ve developed based open folks that i ve spoken with and juliette has spoken with, the information is that phone lines, plural, belonging to michael cohen, were wiretapped in the weeks leading up to the search warrant that occurred several weeks ago. so now we re going back probably about a month and change, but the phone lines belonging to michael cohen, there was a lawful lawful warrant to wiretap those phones. in addition to that, at least one phone call that was made between one of the phone lines belonging to michael cohen was connected with the white house. basically there was a phone call between the white house and one of the phone lines associated with michael cohen and that phone call was listened in to as part of that lawful search warrant. that s essentially our reporting. can i ask a question? yes, go ahead. it s hugh, i got a quick question for michael. michael have you talked to michael cohen or communicated with him in any sort of way over the
been talking so much about what giuliani has had to say about payments to your client and what unfolds next. based on new information from this report, what s your next move in that case? well, there s been a lot of information to come down the pike in the last 18 hours. just a little bit. and we re going to be incredibly yes, the pace of this is rather staggering. we re not going to be reactionary. we re going to be thoughtful and methodical and smart about the way we approach this. i think we ve done this over last two months. i will say this, i think our case has gotten exponentially better over last 24 hours. i think that mr. giuliani s statements clearly are at odds with a number of things that have been said in the past. it s clear to us that the american people were lied to by the president on air force one and there s been a number of other statements that are inconsistent with those. you know, again, i m going to go back to what i said. i do not think this is going to
friendly to saying this is government misconduct if true. he says he is not fully aware of the details of this. he said he was about to call president trump to discuss the nbc news story. to figure out what s going on. he said that this could lead to a real evisceration, in his words, of attorney/client privilege, if an attorney was being wiretapped. so an angry reaction, defiant reaction from the former new york mayor. can i respond to that? yes, please. i find that incredibly ironic. i mean, this is rudy giuliani who served as the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york for years during which i would dare to say there were thousands of wiretap applications made, thousands of wiretaps conducted, evidence procured, individuals charged, individuals conducted and sent to federal penitentiaries across the nation in response to evidence that mr. giuliani himself used by way of wiretap
partly help could it possibly explain the story that maybe whatever strategy there may or may not have been behind the giuliani blitz of the media in the last 24 hours? right. clearly not a mistake. he s been on over and over again. right. he clearly, there was a strategy to go out and get ahead of this in a way trump previous legal teams have not been doing. he even used the word funneled. he funneled the money through the law firm. not a term i would think you want your lawyer to use often. suggests that everything is above board. they want to go ahead and show michael cohen they re not leaving him out here to dry. especially knowing that there could be a wiretap. that they ve gotten all of this information. they know the amount of information in the legal exposure that michael cohen is able to bring on the president s case. they want to show him please don t flip, please don t cooperate, with investigators
what s caught up in a title 3 wiretap, you have to talk about minimization and whether that s followed. by the way, if agents do not follow minimization procedures, that could be the basis for a motion to suppress. minimization, when you say that, you essentially mean going through the information that s collected and making sure to minimize things that aren t relevant to your investigation. well, no. a fisa warrant involves taking all of those data, communications, and storing them. federal wiretaps are different. they are requiring when they are listening as the conversation is going on to turn it off once they determine that the subject matter is irrelevant. the challenge here is what s irrelevant. i want to make sure we re