Evidence

Late Saturday night, Axios broke the story that Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is conducting the criminal investigation of Donald Trump and his associates, has obtained "many tens of thousands" of Trump transition emails, including those of Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner (link here). The emails apparently came directly from the General Services Administration, the federal agency housing transition emails.

As a source told Axios, Mueller's team will comb through the emails to "get new leads."

Not surprisingly, the Trump camp pitched a bloody fit and demanded Mueller return the emails. Trump's lawyers claimed it was illegal and unconstitutional for Mueller to obtain the emails in the manner that he had.

As a piece in The Washington Post noted (link here), this is hogwash. "It’s not your personal email," explained a law professor who is also a former federal criminal prosecutor. "If it ends in .gov, you don’t have any expectation of privacy."

I suspect Trump's lawyers know they don't have a legal leg to stand on here. The fact that they're whining about this to the press, and not filing court motions, suggests they're trying to whip up support from their waning loyalists and the dwindling number of Republicans in Congress who still support Trump in private.

The great irony to all this is that Trump himself, while TV cameras were rolling, begged Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's email in 2016, which would be a crime (details here). But when a prosecutor lawfully obtains his emails, suddenly the shoe is on the proverbial other foot.

It will be interesting to see how this development plays out. Stay tuned.