This is a caato special podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. The seizure of documents from the office of the President's personal attorney raises serious questions about attorney-client privilege

and what it takes to invade upon that important relationship. Clark Neely, vice president

for criminal justice at the Cato Institute, argues that violating that privilege is sometimes made easier by the fact that so much of ordinary daily activity is today categorized as criminal.

What does it take for the government to essentially invade the relationship between an individual and his or her attorney?

Very little, actually, it turns out.

Because why?

Because in order to do that, they have to allege that the crime fraud exception to the attorney

client privilege applies.

And that essentially says that if you have worked

with a lawyer, whether the lawyer knows it or not, but if you've worked with a lawyer in some fashion

to facilitate criminal activity or commit a fraud, then the attorney-client privilege does not apply.

And here's why I say it's a very low standard.

You might think it's a very high and significant standard. It's not. Why?

Because we criminalize utterly trivial conduct in this country. Virtually everybody has committed

some crime or another. And if you're a major business person like Trump has been for most of his life,

you deal with lawyers a lot.

And so the idea that in some way or fashion you could be described as having you

you know engaged your lawyer for the purpose of helping you engage in criminal

activity probably applies to a very substantial number of people who are

doing business today and so you've taken

this very very significant privilege the attorney-client privilege that's even

more significant of course when it's the privilege between the president and

...