Trump Attacks FBI Raid on Michael Cohen's Law Office

Why don't I just fire mother? Well, I think it's a disgrace what's going on. We'll see what happens, but I think it's really a sad situation when you look at what happened that many people have said you should fire him. Joining me is Jimmy Garoula, a professor at Notre Dame Law School. Jimmy, how big an escalation was this raid for the Justice Department? Well, it's significant, there, there's no question about it. And first of all, it's

very rare. It's quite unusual for the Department of Justice to authorize the search warrant of an attorney who is the legal representative of someone who is under investigation by the Department of Justice. So again it's it's very rare. It's rare, but this was done from what we know

by the book. Absolutely, there's no question about it. You know, first, I think it speaks well of UH Special Counsel Mueller because he apparently came across evidence of of a potential crime and he believed that that and for that evidence was outside of the scope of his mandate with respect to investigating the Russia meddling in the two thousand and sixteen election, and rather than investigating it himself, he brought it to the attention of the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein,

and it was Rod Rosenstein that referred the matter to the U. S. Attorney's Office in in in Manhattan. So it was actually the the federal prosecutors in Manhattan that conducted the search warrant. Does this say anything about Mueller making strategic moves to help preserve his investigation even if Trump removes him. Might the U. S. Attorney in Manhattan

be involved? Now? Well, I think he's certainly very cognizant of his credibility and preserving his credibility, and that whatever he ultimately concludes, whether he decides that crimes have been committed or crimes have not been committed. The public is going to have to buy in on this, and that's gonna turn in large part on whether or not he has credibility with respect to the way that he's conducted

his his investigation. And I think this actually weighs in favor of Mueller because it shows again that he's adhering very closely to to his mandate, the formal authority that he's been given, and he's not exceeding exceeding the bounds of that authority. What does it tell you that Rod Rosenstein, who has been under so much pressure for so long from President Trump, and it seems as if, you know, we talk about Mueller being dismissed, and in that we

always talk about Rod Rosenstein being dismissed. What does it tell you that he said, Okay, we're gonna take this and we're gonna send this to the Southern District. Well, what it tells me is that is that he's a prosecutor, that's that's adhering to the rule of law, and that he's not he's not capitulating to political pressure. So, despite the harsh criticisms by President Trump of Rosenstein, in in in in the public forum, uh air publicly. Uh. He's

doing his job. And so if he believes that there's evidence of a crime, then then he's investigating uh, that evidence, rather than than cow towing to political pressure by the president, and he shouldn't do that. So it seems as if, as from everything we've said and learned, that this is a separate investigation. But could there be information that is found in the attorney's office that helps Moller. There's there's no question about it. And so I think that President

Trump is vulnerable in two important ways. I mean, first with respect to the the the now ongoing investigation out of the Manhattan Prosecutor's office regarding Michael Cohen. Certainly, during that investigation, they could uncover evidence that implicates that is incriminating of the president. And that's not far fetched considering the fact that that Cohen portrays himself, he's very proud of the fact that he's the so called fixer for the president in terms of fixing any problems that that

confront President Trump. And so certainly there could be information discovered during that investigation that implicates the president. But perhaps even more more dangerous in terms of exposing the president

even graver legal jeopardy. And that is the president's reaction to all of this, because if he overreacts and he fires Rosenstein, if he overreacts and he fires Mueller, and then we've got the Saturday Night massacre situation being replayed UH today and that could result potentially in impeachment efforts against the president. Let's just discuss briefly a Saturday Night masker situation. How many people would he have to fire? Would you also have to fire the head of the FBI? Well,

he would start if he wants to get rid of Mueller. Again, the Special Council Statute authorizes the Deputy Attorney General to fire the Special Council forecause, and so that would be Rosenstein, that would They would have that that authority. So if Rosenstein refuses to do that, and then the president could fire Rosenstein and then he would have to replace him. And so the question would be who who would Rosenstein

be replaced? Rosenstein be replaced with and then he would order the president would order that person to fire Mueller. What if that person refuses to do so, and then it could continue down the chain of command and in that fashion, or maybe the other option would be for the President to fire Sessions and then place uh, try to get a new attorney general in place that wouldn't

be refused from the Russia investigation. But the problem with that is is that it's going to be very difficult I think if that occurs, if Sessions is fired, to get a new to get the Senate to confirm a new attorney general. And he did criticize Sessions yesterday as well, and this his his feelings about Sessions seemed to seesaw back and forth. But we're out of time. Jimmy, I thank you so much for being on. That's Jimmy Garoule,

a professor at Notre Dame Law School. Buyer is inching closer to completing a sixty six billion dollar acquisition of Monsanto. The last major hurdle is approval from US anti trust regulators, and Buyer is close to getting that. According to a person familiar with the matter, Buyer has the green light from almost two thirds of the jurisdictions it needs to sign off on the biggest transaction yet and the seeds and crop chemicals industry joining me. Is Bloomberg Intelligence, Your

litigation analyst Jennifer Read jen. This deal has been about two years in the making. What have the Justice Department's concerns been to slow it down? You know, first of all, a lot of that time is just in the investigation of these deals, because this is a really complex industry, and they entered into this deal at a time when there was a lot of consolidation. If you remember now and do Pomp we're emerging in KEMP China and cent Genta were emerging. So it really takes a lot of

time to weed through the issues. And these companies, in particular, one Buyer is stronger in chemicals, agricultural chemicals, and Monsanto stronger in agricultural seeds, and there are ways in which these products work together and can be actually even tied together in certain ways that I think that the Department of Justice needed to ensure that whatever they did here and whatever the remedy might be, would would fix any issues that might allow these companies to sort of unlaw

off league tie these products together. So the Wall Street Journal first reported on the possibility or the likelihood of approval from the US antitrust regulators. What are some of the agreements that seemed to be in place to move the antitrust regulators to approve it. You know, there's a lot happening here because the European regulators had already required almost all of buyer's seed business to be divested, so

you know, pretty much practically eliminating that overlap. And I believe there was also um some of their chemicals had to get chemical agricultural chemicals needed to be divested too. Now what the US said is look perhaps and down DuPont. What European regulators required was also good enough for US

because this tends to be a global market. But in this case, the competitive dynamic is a little different in the US because we do allow genetically modified seeds, whereas in a lot of countries in Europe these are not allowed. So you've got a different dynamic there. And they needed to ensure that they had everything covered. And it looks like they are requiring the companies to sell more seed and chemical assets, as well as possibly either sell or

licensed digital farming assets. The Justice Department, we know, as we've talked about, the Justice Department is challenging the A T and T time Warner merger and there's currently a trial before a judge in d C. Can you tell about the Trump administration's approach to antitrust From looking at these two deals, you know, we're beginning to a little

bit and I think it's still early. But the thing that's really interesting is that when UM President Trump was elected and started thinking about who he might put in place the Department of Justice, and the guy he put in, Makondel Rahim to head up anti trust, was kind of considered a Republican and a traditional Republican, and I think a lot of people thought it might bring back a time when it was a little bit more like what enforcement was from mergers under George Bush, a little easier,

letting some of these deals go through UM where where maybe the Democrats might not have And what we're seeing is that that's not really the case. We're seeing tough enforcement year with the obviously with respect to A T and T they're suing to block, and with respect to Buyern Monsanto, they're looking for some really major remedies here. So what does that tell you about other mergers that are currently pending. You mentioned Sinclair Tribune, Etna, CVS, Signa,

Express Scripts, Disney Fox. Well, I think that they're all going to need to expect the same that they're not just going to escape through um, you know on this sort of uh you know less a fair attitude. That's not going to be that. They're going to get scrutinized carefully. They're going to have to and they're going to have to remedy any possible harms and and it's not necessarily

going to be easy and it's not going to be behavioral. Well, that's what it seems like now if they're in front of the Department of Justice, it seems fairly clear the behavioral remedies aren't going to be accepted. This was one of the problems in the A T and T deal and what they'll require something structural. However, that's not necessarily

the case, at least we don't know yet. Before the FTC, the FTC has always preferred a structural remedy over behavioral remedy, but they have accepted purely behavioral remedies in the past. Now we're going to soon have an entirely new crop of FTC commissioners coming in five actually that will come in and the existing two will leave, and we'll see what they have to say about this and what they'll

do going forward. You know, as you mentioned there's been this wave of consolidation in seed and crop chemical firms in the past three years. So why and farmers are concerned, they've expressed concern. Why allow even more consolidation. Well, you know, the thing is, that's what the remedy is meant to do. When there is a remedy of one of these deals, it's meant to replace the competition that's been lost by virtue of the deal. And when you think of it

that way, it's not really consolidation. And here what has happened is that a company that wasn't in seeds before but wasn't chemicals, that's b a SF is going to be acquiring a lot of these assets, if not all of them, and becomes a vertically integrated large seed and chemical company akin to Dow DuPont and by mon Santo. So so in a way, what they have done with this remedy is preserved the competition that is lost by virtue of the deal. In most cases, is EU approval

stricter than US approval or vice versa. You know, I think it's merger dependent, but in general, sort of in a macro sense, I think the European regulators are thought of as more stringent and more difficult and more demanding than the U S regulators um. But it remains to be seen because we are seeing, you know, a tough regulator right now in the Department of Justice with at least a T and T in with this deal. So we'll see what happens going forward. Now, will they be

able to close after they get US approval. They're still waiting for some other approvals, but I think those will fall in line. I believe Russia and India, possibly a few others, but those will likely fall in line once this US approval comes through. What happens in the US is the Department of Justice will have to put out a package for public comment for sixty days explaining what their concerns were here and why, what the remedy is

and why it'll alleviate these concerns. After sixty days, a judge has to sign off on this, and then it becomes final. Let's jump over to the A, T and T time Warner Merger for a moment. That trial is ongoing in d C and nless. I heard the judge asked both sides to cut down their witness list. He seems to be very interested in moving this along quick more quickly, and it has been very slow, starting with a snow delay in the very first week which sort

of put them behind. But he does realize that the parties are running up against a deadline and that they want to get his decision before June, and in order to do that, he's got a lot to get through. And he said thinks his opinion is going to be two hundred pages. Oh, I'm not sure probably, but that's what he says. So in about a minute, what's the highlight of the testimony that you've heard there? You know?

I think to me they're two highlights here. One the judge made a comment about this arbitration offer that, um, a T and t's put on the table. It's similar to something that Comcast an NBC you had to do in order to get their deal through. And he was asking the Department of Justice obviously thinks it's insufficient. And he was asking a witness who express express some concerns over that arbitration. Could it be changed? How could it

be approved that that you would accept it? So the means he's thinking about that, and I think that's a positive sign for a T and T. And what was the second one. Well, the second one for me was the fact that UM, the judge did allow some documents of UM A, T and T Direct TV employees UM in which they expressed concern about when the Comcast, NBCU behavioral concessions were to expire, and they expressed concern about what those companies might do, which basically support the Department

of Justices case. So that was a score for the Department of Justice. Always great to have you here, jenn that's Jennifer E, Senior Litigation Atlas for Bloomberg Intelligence. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, un cloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg m HM.