>> Federal investigators are sifting through tens of thousands of emails belonging to two
prominent defense attorneys in Baltimore.
Now according to the Baltimore Sun, federal agents raided the separate offices of these
defense attorneys Ken Ravenell and Joshua Treem in June and copied 50,000 emails to
and from Treem.
Now in this case, Joshua Treem is defending Ken Ravenell even though he is also a defense
attorney.
Now federal prosecutors are going after Ravenell claiming that he is involved in some sort
of drug trafficking scheme.
Questions have swirled since federal agents raided there offices.
Neither man, by the way, has been charged with the crime, and federal prosecutors have
continued their investigation under a court-ordered seal.
Officials declined to discuss the matter.
Now here's what everyone should be concerned about.
They just copied all these emails even through all of them, there's 50,000 they copied.
Only about 119 of them are relevant to the case they're investigating.
So, there are other clients included in those emails and the federal authorities have access
to them and they're claiming, no, no don't worry about it.
We're only gonna look at the ones that are relevant to this case.
Sure like, who's gonna trust them on that?
>> Great.
>> Yep.
>> And what’s so upsetting about this, the first one is, one, they were able to do something
that could be so damaging to a lot of people-
>> Yeah.
>> When these two attorneys involved here are not charged with any crime in.
This is just part of the investigation, and you will have people at home saying, well
if they didn't commit a crime, then it won't matter.
Do you ever watch First 48, and are like, shut up, stop talking, shut up.
And it's not that easy, that's why people say don't say anything when you're being questioned
by the police until you have an attorney there.
Because it's not always just the guilty people that get in trouble.
It's not always just the guilty people who don't get to go home, and defense attorneys
have to defend some of the worst of the worst.
And it's easy to hate defense attorneys, but they also defend due process, other aspects,
our rights.
They defend our rights, they are I think one of the most important parts of the system.
They defend our rights, they defend the process as it's supposed to work.
And your emails to your attorney, we're just supposed to believe that they're gonna look
away from all of the ones.
They took 50,000 emails with only 113 have anything to do with what they're investigating.
We're supposed to believe they're just gonna turn a blind eye to anything else they come
across.
>> That's exactly right.
Okay, so let me tell you, again, neither one of them have been charged with anything.
>> But here are the accusations according to the lead prosecutor in this case.
In his written argument, Assistant US Attorney Derek Hines told judges that Ravenell was
under investigation for quote assisting drug dealers to sell drugs, laundering the proceeds
of drug dealers.
And then attempting to cover up their crimes by obstructing investigations.
Now I have a lot of questions about this case, and it isn't in the reports.
I wanna know whether federal investigators had a warrant by a judge to do all this, right?
Because there hasn't been any reporting indicating that they have a warrant.
And there's a panel of judges who are going to make a decision about the, whether or not
it is legal for them to obtain and copy all 50,000 emails.
Why is it taking so long for them to make that decision when you know that attorney
client privilege is supposed to be protected.
>> Right.
>> Now when I show up to the studio, the producer sent me the story before I got here.
And I got to the studio and I had to go to broken I was like, am I reading this correctly?
>> Cuz it just sounds wild, right.
>> I just didn't understand, I was like, did I miss something?
How is this possible that these people aren't charged with the crime, and they're just seizing
their emails like that if it was nothing?
>> It's crazy.
>> It's crazy, they're basically accusing of being the Barksdale attorney in the wire,
something like that.
But unless you're charging someone with a crime, I don't understand how you can just,
hey, just give me your emails.
No, you're gonna let them take them from you, no problem.
>> An attorney breaking attorney client privilege could lose their license.
>> Yeah, they could get disbarred.
>> But the feds could just swim through it, this is jest-
>> It's weird.
>> And if these judges makes the wrong decision, and they allow this type of behavior to stand,
that sets precedent.
>> My god, the potentials of abuse are, yeah, cuz say-
>> I know, what are they going to do- >> Say this guy is dirty, whatever, whatever,
that's not the problem.
The problem is, when an ACLU lawyer is defending an immigrant or something, or someone who
is being heinously targeted by law enforcement, whatever.
That's when the other side comes, and that's when this kind of precedent is very dangerous.
>> Yeah, and so the IRS is involved in this investigation because there's possible money
laundering involved.
And so, there was an example given in the reporting that talked about, well, what about
someone who didn't pay their taxes, and they needed this defense attorney to get involved.
And If the IRS is involved in this investigation, they come across that email about a client
who didn't pay their taxes or if there was some sort of tax fraud or tax scheme.
Is that person who's not involved in this case also implicated because the IRS has access
to these emails?
Now they're claiming, no, don't worry about it.
We are outsourcing the review of these emails to a third party.
So, there isn't any worry about the violation of attorney client privilege, but there is.
The federal government and these federal prosecutors now have access to 50,000 emails, many of
which have nothing to do with this case, whatsoever.
>> That was like what the NSA said after the Snowden revelations.
We're not looking at any of the stuff, we're just collecting all this stuff.
And then it comes up obviously that they're like sharing your nudes with each other and
stuff.
>> Right.
>> And spying on their ex-girlfriends and- >> And the illegal wiretapping that happened
under the Bush administration.
>> Yeah.
>> They claimed no, no, no, there's nothing shady going on.
But then we found out that there were members of the military listening in on phone sex
conversations.
>> Yep.
>> So, that's what you can expect from the federal government when they say don't worry,
you can trust us with your personal information.