The Cohen office raid once again clarifies where a number of players are coming from

Look, this isn't Mueller's doing.

Yes, his team came across the information that spurred it, but that information was referred to the District Attorney for Southern New York, who issued the search warrant after it had been signed off on by a federal magistrate judge.

And the information has to do with the payoffs resulting from the concurrent 2006 affairs the Very Stable Genius was having with porn star Stormy Daniels and Playmate Karen McDougal. Cohen himself had paid the hush money to Daniels, and American Media, Inc, which owns the National Enquirer, paid the hush money to McDougal.

The VSG shills who took the position that these affairs were insignificant on a moral level, now that they are faced with their legal ramifications, are howling about the "deep state" and engaging in whataboutism, bringing up Madame Bleachbit and Uranium One and Michael Flynn.

I repeat, this is not part of the Mueller investigation. Such arguments and the bringing in of Comey and the mention of all the Democrats on Mueller's team are a smokescreen.

No, the sybaritic behavior and low character of the current US president are at the core of the Cohen arrest and raid.

And then there is the eight minutes of ranting in which the VSG indulged during the photo-op portion of his national-security team's discussion of the Syrian situation. Once again bad-mouthing Jeff Sessions. (How long is he going to endure this kind of humiliation before he says, "I don't need this; I'm out of here"?) Claiming that Cohen's office was "broken into." Trying to fold this matter into an overall "witch hunt."

Why was one of the most heavy-handed approach to getting the relevant materials taken?

Prosecutors are admonished that, because raiding a lawyer’s office has serious constitutional implications, it should be avoided unless truly essential to a significant criminal investigation. If the only matter under investigation were a potential campaign-finance violation that would normally not be grist for criminal prosecution, it would be outrageous to raid a lawyer’s office — especially, the president’s lawyer. Not only must high-level Justice Department approval be obtained before seeking a search warrant for an attorney’s premises; the prosecutors and their superiors must explore whether less intrusive investigative alternatives — such as seeking the desired materials by grand-jury subpoena — would be viable.

That the government must have decided they were not viable is remarkable. A prosecutor gets a search warrant when the subject cannot be trusted to cooperate and hand over materials voluntarily. But Cohen has been cooperating with investigators, at least ostensibly. His counsel, Stephen Ryan, maintains that Cohen has been giving information to “all government entities,” intimating that he has cooperated with Mueller in addition to providing extensive documentary evidence and testimony to congressional committees. The fact that Cohen’s law practice was searched anyway cannot help but remind us of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s case. Manafort’s Virginia home was raided by Mueller’s team even as he was in the midst of cooperating with and surrendering documents to congressional investigators. Manafort, of course, was ultimately indicted on a wide array of felony charges.

So, no, let's keep basics front and center. This is occurring because the Very Stable Genius habitually behaved abominably. These particular incidents of it may have happened twelve years ago, but karma sometimes takes a while to manifest itself.