This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, August 31st, 2018. I'm Caleb Brown.

When does your own attorney have to give evidence against you?

When it's more than possible you've used that attorney to perpetrate a crime or fraud.

Paul Rosenzweig is a senior fellow at the R Street Institute and a contributor to the

lawfare blog.

We spoke earlier this week about the troubles besetting Donald Trump and his former attorney

Michael Cohen.

When Donald Trump, as he is oft want to do, takes to Twitter to talk about, for example,

don't

it it seems strange that the president's personal lawyer

is you know now essentially a part of the prosecution in a sense so what do we know about

the how we how ought we to think about crimes potentially committed by a president and attorney-client privilege?

Well, let's step through it in in three pieces at first let's let's all agree that this is one of the rare instances that Donald Trump is right. You know that Michael

coke you should not hire Michael Cone he's not a great lawyer. But let's kind of step through it in a few pieces.

First, let's begin with the idea that privileges against testifying truthfully are the exception, not the rule.

The general rule is that grand juries investigating crime in the federal system and in state systems as well, but I'll restrict

myself to a federal system are entitled to every man's evidence, that's the quote, and

apologies for using the traditional gendered term but that's the way it's phrased.

And the idea here of course is that the authority of the government to investigate violations of criminal law is pretty much

plenary and pretty much unbridled when it comes to seeking the truthful testimony of recipient witnesses, of whom an attorney might very well be one.

So the second step is to ask, you know, why is an attorney privileged not to disclose

the information that's provided to him by a client in a criminal investigation.

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