See also: Mueller, FBI, DOJ go thermonuclear in efforts to bring down Trump; The raid on Trump's lawyer: The pretext

In the absence of any public statements from Robert Mueller's team or the FBI or DOJ – just leaks to pet media outlets – we can only speculate as to the motives for a thermonuclear escalation of tactics being used against President Trump in the effort to reverse the presidential election of 2016.  They have extended the fishing expedition to include seizure of protected communications between the president and his lawyers, now in the hands of the FBI, the same agency that has been stonewalling congressional investigation into its behavior in launching the surveillance of the Trump campaign on charges of collusion with Russia.  It should be noted that no evidence whatsoever of such collusion has been developed and made public, which has to be a deep embarrassment at a minimum.

Update: President Trump was negotiating conditions for his interview with the special counsel that were restrictive as to what could be asked.  Perhaps Mueller determined that it was unlikely to be productive.  This raid now virtually precludes such an interview being agreed to.  This will enable Mueller to seek a grand jury subpoena, which would lead to free questioning of the president with no counsel present.  Trump can be expected to decline to honor such a subpoena, which would set off a constitutional crisis and help along the impeachment movement. 

Michael Cohen.

Now the FBI that is embarrassed and potentially criminally liable for its behavior in the FISA warrant application has free rein to examine the private and legally protected communications between Trump and his lawyer and to fish for further lines of inquiry, even if legally constrained from using evidence that is legally protected.  The president and the public are supposed to trust that a separate group of FBI agents specially trained in examining protected attorney-client communications will fully safeguard the interests of the president and his counsel.

"Trust us," the FBI says, even as its stonewalls congressional inquiries into its own potentially criminal behavior investigating the president.

Timing is everything here.  The long awaited DOJ inspector general's report is coming any day now.  We don't know what it will say, but in all likelihood, it will move the national conversation in a direction unfriendly to the interests of the Deep State.  

A friend who lives in a wealthy suburban New York neighborhood deeply hostile to Trump emails a telling vignette on the public being targeted by this raid:

I was sitting at the train station watching CNN with people declaring even the Republican Congress has to consider impeachment at this point, blah, blah, blah.  The one thing I would think is that anything found re Trump can't be used against him because of attorney-client privilege but that doesn't mean they won't make it public and destroy him that way.  If only leftists cheering this on understood what it means more broadly. 

There is an election in four-plus months, in which control of the House of Representatives and the Senate is at stake.  Even if the evidence developed out of the raid is thrown out of court in any resulting prosecution, that is irrelevant.  What is important is the ammunition to be developed and leaked to pet media outlets that can be used to sway voters to elect an impeachment Congress.

My strong suspicion is that, having failed to find anything related to his mandate, Robert Mueller is baiting the president to fire him.  By stepping over the line and fishing for evidence in confidential and privileged attorney-client relations, he is misbehaving, but doing so through a cut-out, the U.S. attorney in New York.  He wants the firestorm that would result to push control of Congress into Democrat hands.