Former White House counsel John Dean said Thursday that the Justice Department's use of pen register monitoring of Michael Cohen's telephone calls required "high-level" agency approval, as well as authorization by a federal judge, because they "must be related to a criminal investigation."
"They are not considered searches," tweeted Dean, who advised former President Richard Nixon and was implicated in the Watergate scandal.
". . . Government can learn a lot from pen registers."
NBC News corrected an earlier report Thursday that Cohen's calls were monitored and not "tapped" by federal investigators — and that included one call between Cohen and the White House.
"Three senior U.S. Officials are telling us it was not a wiretap," reporter Tom Winter told "Meet the Press," adding: "Instead it was what is referred to a pen register.
"That means it is a log of phone calls that were made from a specific phone line or specific phone lines," Winter said.
He cited sources close to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is now on President Donald Trump's personal legal team, who said Giuliani learned of at least one phone call Trump made to Cohen soon after the April 9 raid on Cohen's home, office, and hotel room by FBI agents.
Investigators, Winter reported, were electronically eavesdropping on Cohen in the weeks leading up to the raids.
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