The Trump presidential transition team went on the attack Saturday against Robert Mueller’s independent investigation, claiming it had unlawfully obtained tens of thousands of emails dating back to the transition period between Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory and his 2017 inauguration.
Now, according to Mike Allen of Axios, a source close to the transition has claimed the team will be sending a letter to Mueller claiming some of the emails are privileged and demanding they be returned.
“What they did is totally illegal, and they need to fix it,” the source reportedly said. The Mueller investigation, for its part, fully denies anything improper took place, with a spokesperson saying the emails were obtained either “with the account owner’s consent” or through “appropriate criminal process.”
The core of the dispute is that Mueller’s team didn’t ask the Trump transition team for the emails. Rather, it obtained them from the General Services Administration, which supplies email addresses to government officials during the transition. The email addresses in question make their official government function pretty clear, as they’re all “ptt.gov” accounts.
This latest dustup over the transition emails continues a tense few weeks, in which Republican officials and pro-Trump figures on Fox News have increasingly turned their fire on Mueller in what appears to be an effort to undermine and taint the credibility of the investigation. This tone shift has been particularly apparent since former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and was confirmed to be cooperating with the investigation.
Additionally, it strikes a startling contrast when held up against the events of the 2016 presidential election. Throughout that race, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server became a paramount issue for the mainstream media, one that dogged her for months. Trump himself repeatedly harped on the issue, even calling for the Russian government to illegally obtain and release them. Now, his legal team is decrying a trove of emails being obtained in the course of an officially sanctioned investigation, rather than hacked or stolen.
It’s also stoked speculation whether Trump will move to fire Mueller in an effort to halt or stymie an investigation that’s increasingly reaching into the White House.
On Friday, Democratic congresswoman Jackie Speier told KQED that a rumor’s been going around Capitol Hill that Trump wants to fire Mueller before Christmas while lawmakers are out of town for the holiday break. That’s only a rumor, however, and she didn’t get into details about who she heard it from or how seriously it should be taken. White House counsel Ty Cobb has repeatedly denied that the president is considering firing Mueller.