President Donald Trump has long complained about the investigation led by special counselor Robert Mueller. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images Trump lashes out against FBI raid on his attorney: 'Attorney–client privilege is dead!' The raid represents the DOJ's closest move on the president's inner circle.

President Donald Trump launched a Twitter tirade Tuesday morning to complain about a Justice Department raid against his longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen, publicly venting anger over the raid for a second straight day.

“Attorney–client privilege is dead!” Trump wrote online Tuesday morning, following that Twitter post with another decrying investigations into his 2016 presidential campaign as “A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!”


The Monday raid against Cohen, which reportedly included his office, apartment and a hotel room he had been using, was conducted by the U.S. attorney’s office in New York and represents the deepest strike yet by the Justice Department into the president’s inner circle. Trump has long complained about the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller and characterized the Cohen raid not just as an attack against him but as “an attack on our country” and “an attack on what we all stand for.”

Aside from Mueller’s investigation, Cohen is also at the center of a legal fight related to a $130,000 payment he made in the days leading up to the 2016 election to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. That payment was part of a nondisclosure agreement, which Daniels is now suing to void because it was never signed by the president, related to an alleged 2006 sexual encounter Daniels says she had with Trump.

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Trump has denied the affair and has said he knew nothing about the $130,000 payment. Cohen has said he made the payment from his own personal funds and did so without Trump's knowledge.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a former U.S. attorney and Connecticut attorney general, called the Justice Department raid on Cohen a "seismic" event, in part because approval for such a step would have had to come from multiple Trump appointees. Blumenthal, appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," speculated that the raid against Cohen was related to potential obstruction of justice, money laundering or wire or bank fraud.

Blumenthal also said that for a raid such as the one carried out against Cohen, the U.S. attorney would have to meet a burden higher than probable cause, convincing the Justice Department that the raid would yield "very significant evidence of a crime."

"It’s a little bit like a nuclear strike with multiple warheads," the senator said. "He has the vault. He has the keys to the kingdom. He knows all the secrets about Donald Trump and if he were to cooperate it would be indeed a transformative event."

In a statement, Cohen’s attorney complained that the raid had seized communications protected by attorney-client privilege. Trump objected to the raid in much more personal terms, leaving open the possibility that he might fire Mueller during a 10-minute rant to reporters during a photo-op with military leaders.

“I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, a good man,” Trump said Monday evening. “It’s a disgraceful situation. … I’ve been saying it for a long time. I have this witch hunt constantly going on.”

Asked specifically about the prospect of firing Mueller, Trump told reporters that "many people have said 'you should fire him,'" but would offer only "we'll see what happens" as to his own position on the special counsel's job security. The president lambasted his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for making "what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country" by recusing himself from the Justice Department's Russia investigation, a key step that led to Mueller's appointment.

Trump also lashed out at the Justice Department and in particular Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for unfairly targeting him while overlooking what the president said were "horrible things" and "all of the crimes that were committed" by 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

“This is the most biased group of people, these people have the biggest conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen,” the president said of the Justice Department's leadership. “Democrats all — or just about all, either Democrats or a couple of Republicans that worked for President Obama."

The notion that Trump might fire Mueller raised bipartisan alarm bells among lawmakers Tuesday morning. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told Fox News that "the special counsel has to be allowed to do his job. We got to finish the process," while conceding that "It's painful. I don't blame the president for feeling like it's unfair." The Louisiana lawmaker said he believes "the president is too smart" to fire Mueller, warning that such a step would likely provoke a response from Congress.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, said on Fox News that "it would be suicide" for the president to discuss firing Mueller, while Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said "now more than ever is the time to protect special counsel Mueller and his investigation."

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), in an interview with "Morning Joe," characterized the president as "more and more panicked" by Mueller's investigation and said Congress should take steps to insulate the special counsel's probe from any White House interference.

"Whether it's an attempt to fire Mueller or pre-emptively pardon folks, we would view that as the president pushing the nation into a Constitutional crisis and we would need to respond as the Article I branch to make sure that we protect the country," he said.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) was less optimistic that a move by Trump to fire Mueller would be countered by a Republican-controlled Congress, especially in the House where there are deep pockets of loyalty to Trump within the GOP majority. "It's an uncomfortable thing because I see nothing in this Congress, and there's political reasons for this being true, I see nothing in this Congress to suggest that if the president fires the deputy attorney general, fires Bob Mueller in order to stop this investigation… that this Congress would act," he told CNN's "New Day."

"So that takes us to a world where, you know, as Lincoln said, 'public sentiment is everything,'" Himes continued. "So the way public sentiment would play out there, what the public would do, what the public would demand their elected officials do is, I think, where this gets a little interesting."

Quint Forgey contributed to this story.

