Story highlights Sen. Ron Johnson said the case might show that some laws need to be updated

Rep. Trey Gowdy said it's up to "the trial judge" to weigh in on using the emails

(CNN) Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told CNN he may seek to change federal law after concerns were by raised by Trump lawyers that special counsel Robert Mueller had improperly gained access to thousands of transition emails.

Johnson told CNN that he thinks there needs to be a change to the law to say that those transition emails, administered by the General Services Administration, are not the property of the federal government.

"We're going to have to potentially update the laws ... to make it very clear that even though this is housed at GSA, this is not government property," said the Wisconsin Republican, who planned to write a letter to GSA to get more clarity on what happened. "I think those are some legitimate issues they raised."

Johnson added that "we need to look at the transition law and maybe clarify those issues. ... I think they are definitely private emails, so we need to clarify that."

Attorneys for the Trump presidential transition wrote to the House and Senate oversight panels to argue that the emails, which were on a government domain, were its property and should not have been turned over without its approval.

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