Special Counsel Robert Mueller laughs when asked if there are any limits on what his prosecutors can do. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

According to several reports, Robert Mueller’s minions have pulled a fast one. Rather than ask the Trump transition legal team for relevant emails and documents generated between November 9, 2016 and January 20, 2017, Mueller’s team has gone directly to the agency charged with safeguarding the materials and obtained them there.

In a letter obtained by Fox News and sent to House and Senate committees on Saturday, the transition team’s attorney alleges “unlawful conduct” by the career staff at the General Services Administration in handing over transition documents to the special counsel’s office. The transition legal team argues it could be a violation of the 4th Amendment – which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Kory Langhofer, the counsel to Trump for America, wrote in Saturday’s letter that the GSA “did not own or control the records in question.” Langhofer said the special counsel’s office received “tens of thousands of emails” from the GSA as well as certain laptops and cell phones containing privileged materials. The transition attorney said they discovered the “unauthorized disclosures” by the GSA on December 12th and 13th and raised concerns with the special counsel’s office.

More details via Axios.

Why it matters: The transition emails are said to include sensitive exchanges on matters that include potential appointments, gossip about the views of particular senators involved in the confirmation process, speculation about vulnerabilities of Trump nominees, strategizing about press statements, and policy planning on everything from war to taxes. “Mueller is using the emails to confirm things, and get new leads,” a transition source told me. How it happened: The sources say Mueller obtained the emails from the General Services Administration, the government agency that hosted the transition email system, which had addresses ending in “ptt.gov,” for Presidential Transition Team. Axios has asked the Special Counsel’s Office for comment and will update this story with the response. The transition sources said they were surprised about the emails because they have been in touch with Mueller’s team and have cooperated.

“They ask us to waive NDAs [nondisclosure agreements] and things like that,” a second source said. “We have never said ‘no’ to anything.” The twist: The sources say that transition officials assumed that Mueller would come calling, and had sifted through the emails and separated the ones they considered privileged. But the sources said that was for naught, since Mueller has the complete cache from the dozen accounts.

Trump lawyers claim Mueller obtained privileged email through GSA. If so, it would be a uniquely stupid mistake that could taint the SC investigation. https://t.co/q9sehKuCGb — Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) December 16, 2017

The privilege issue is a novel one but it was clearly inappropriate to use the GSA as an avenue to obtain emails that should be reviewed by counsel first.https://t.co/q9sehKuCGb — Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) December 16, 2017

Speaking only for myself, this is the kind of thing that convinces me that Robert Mueller has no more interest in exploring “collusion” between members of the Trump campaign and Russia than he does is learning Sanskrit. He and his entire team, beyond the obvious and grotesque conflicts and partisanship, are really interested in collecting scalps and they are trying to do it by any means. The pre-dawn, no-knock raid on Paul Manafort’s home and then fighting to keep him under house arrest is just one symptom to this fascistic behavior.

Here, Mueller, himself, signed off on his team acquiring documents covered by attorney-client privilege by subterfuge. It probably isn’t illegal but it definitely shows that Mueller and his team have zero respect for the law or for even the appearance of propriety. This, in the long run, is not going to work out well for Mueller or his people.