The Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller apparently obtained *all* the emails of the Trump transition team (as well as the contents of their laptops and cell phones) as long ago as last August according to an exclusive report by Axios today.
https://www.axios.com/scoop-mueller-obtains-tens-of-thousands-of-trump-transition-emails-2517994590.htmlMueller's staff obtained around 50,000 unredacted emails across at least seven major accounts with
ptt.gov terminations from the General Services Administration (GSA) which was the government funded organisation that provided offices, clerical services and email hosting to the Trump transition team.
The Special prosecutor's office subsequently made an official request to the White House for the same email archives without disclosing that they already had them. Trump's legal team handed over only a tiny fraction of the emails and implied that executive privilege covered anything they had had not provided.
Trump officials only belatedly discovered Mueller had all the emails when his prosecutors used them as the basis for questions to witnesses including multiple members of President Trump's staff, the sources said.
Kory Langhofer, counsel for the transition team has now cried 'foul' in a seven page letter to congressional committees Saturday saying that "career staff at the General Services Administration ... have unlawfully produced [transition team] private materials, including privileged communications, to the Special Counsel's Office."
The letter says this was a violation of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
That letter itself has been leaked in its entirety to Axios.
In other developments, Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law who features prominently in the transition team email exchanges is now reported to be seeking to enlist the help of a specialist crisis management PR company, according to a report in the Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kushners-legal-team-looks-to-hire-crisis-public-relations-firm/2017/12/15/6fbf144c-e1c3-11e7-9eb6-e3c7ecfb4638_story.html?utm_term=.52e3999f3abc