The pretext for subpoenaing Trump's attorney's records is inconsistent with the actual law

Thomas Lifson:

Bradley Smith has thoroughly debunked one of the rationales for the seizure of attorney-client privileged communications in attorney Michael Cohen’s office on suspicion of violation of federal election laws. One[i] of the allegations is that the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels amounted to an in-kind campaign contribution, far exceeding the amount permitted an individual to contribute. Smth demonstrates that this is nonsense in his Wall Street Journal column titled, Stormy Weather for Campaign Finance Laws.”
...

This makes it clear that the payment to Stormy Daniels, which has many non-campaign justifications (for instance, concealing the purported affair from Trump’s wife and children) cannot by law be paid by campaign funds.

This must be taken seriously, because Smith was not only a law school professor earlier in his career, he was also chair of the Federal Election Commission that enforces campaign finance laws.

As a friend emailed me:

It appears that Mueller, the US Attorney from the Southern District, the senior Justice Department officials who apparently had to approve the raid, and the judge who issued the search warrant either do not understand the theory behind the campaign finance laws or have abused their authority in the same way as the electronic surveillance of Carter Page via the FISA court warrant did. It is a truly unbelievable situation. And this is with Republicans in power. The Deep State is for real.

...

I think they let their anti-Trump bias and a need to hurt him politically override the law and common sense.  In the process, they also violated the 6th Amendment to the Constitution.  I think Cohen and Trump may be able to sue for damages for this unwarranted intrusion.

An Obama holdover who has been accused of corruption approved the subpoena.