attorney, Michael Cohen, has been in the headlines recently. I'm not going to ask you specific questions about his case, but I wanted to clarify for the record some of the legal and investigative processes that lend itself to that type of case.
You may recall that when Mr. Cohen's apartment, office, and hotel room were first raided by the FBI in April of this year, the President attacked these steps. He declared that, quote, attorney-client privilege is dead. It was, quote, a total witch hunt. And he described the investigation as a, quote, disgraceful situation and an attack on our country.
Now, the raid was conducted by the FBI pursuant to a search warrant and at the direction of the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, I think. Can you walk us through the steps that the FBI and DOJ take before approving a search warrant on an attorney and seizing documents that might include potentially privileged materials?
Mr. Comey. In very shorthand I will. It's a complicated process, but it involves a long series of approvals because it's what we would call a sensitive investigative matter. It touched on attorney-client relationships potentially, which are the core of our Nation, and so it would require approval to a very high level in the FBI, a very high level in the Department of Justice, and then have to go to a Federal judge.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. Was there anything that took place in these investigative steps that destroyed the attorney-client
