fits. what else is going on is don mcgahn, the white house counsel wanted him out and spearheaded this effort. he thought that ty cobb gave up too much to the special counsel and working with his lawyer, who s good friends with emmett flood, they worked to recruit flood the last year. mcgahn and flood see things the same way. they think the executive power, the privilege issue should be exerted more and more should be kept away and there should be a more adversarial approach to the investigation. michael, can i ask you if if you have any clarity on whether or not the president s new legal team, involving rudy giuliani, who s been on board for two weeks and mr. flood who s on board as of today, are they also going to be working on the michael cohen case in the southern district of new york? the two other lawyers brought on board the same day as julgiulia
this morning, right up until two hours before you posted your story, where he never mentioned it, never came up, gave no indication he was on his way out. do you have any clearer sense if he jumped or if he was pushed? well, there s two things about this. one is that ty cobb is a veteran washington lawyer. he s been around for a long time and he is close to retirement. you know, he likes to spend time down in south carolina, and that all sort of fits. but what else was going on is that don mccann, the white house cown semi, really wanted him out and really spearheaded this effort. he thought cobb had given up way too much to the special counsel, in working with his lawyer, bill burke, who is actually good friends with emmet flood. they worked to recruit flood over the past year and increasingly in the past few months. mcgahn and burke convincing him to come in. mcgahn and flood see things the same way, the privilege issue should be exerted more and more should be kept away and there
jones as a special master? michael avenatti said it was the right move. what will she be doing? i totally agree that was the right move. you have a situation here where the appearance of fairness is extremely important, given the public scrutiny in this case. what judge jones will be tasked in doing is vetting the privilege issue. as a neutral arbiter of that issue, so that it s clear to the public and to everyone that no sides are being picked, no one s being favored. there will be no filtered team staff by government lawyers and agents. and on the other side the defense isn t going to get a first crack at it either. it s going to be judge jones who s going to be dealing with privilege issues, and that s going to again give the appearance of fairness to both sides in this, frankly, very extraordinary case. i got another question for you. you know this legal team prosecuting cohen, so what can you tell us about them? they re pretty young, right? they are.
crime fraud to be able to look at the documents. typically, john, those are done by subpoena. the standard way is for the department of justice to subpoena documents, and then if somebody has a privilege issue to come in to the judge and make a motion to quash saying they can t do this, and they will argue crime fraud deception. there will be a sealed hearing. the judge will look at stuff in camera, which means secretly, and a decision will be made. here what complicates it immensely and makes me wonder why the search was necessary, is they re already in there looking at the documents. i find that, as a white-collar defense attorney, very, very troubling. i know now it s pro-controversy and pro-fbi who wants to see the president in trouble, but this is a search that should concern all of us. and my view is unless they have pretty rock solid evidence that
that these recordings, since no one knows what they are, is something that will be in the hands of the fbi. and that s really going to be the focus of this court hearing today. all right, kara, thank you very much. terrific information there. let s try to understand it some more. joining me is kendall coffey, thank you for being with us. on the subject of the tapes, a couple of questions. if they exist, number one, wow. and number two, a guarantee they would be admissible or useable in an investigation? well, it s a double wow in terms of the existence of tapes. and with cohen s reputation as something of a recording artist who was taping a lot of people, that could be a major focus of the fbi s early interest. i don t think too many of them are going to be privileged unless he was recording donald trump, assuming he was recording third parties, there s not going to be a privilege issue there. and we all know that very few things are as probative, except perhaps for video, than an