I think their knowledge of the law can give a certain type of person a sense of being indestructible in court.
But I’ve met several attorneys and some are just really assholes. One called me a cunt over the phone because I wouldn’t tell him what he could learn at the county or the Secretary of State.
Being a priest doesn’t mean you’re automatically a good person. Same with attorneys.
Not sure I beleive this. True, history shows Trump wouldn’t take the time to pee on someone if they were on fire, no matter how loyal to him they were (apocryphal Russian surveillance video notwithstanding), but plenty of people successfully enriched themselves and/or advanced their personal (universally terrible) political agenda by attaching themselves to the Trump wagon. And would have continued to do so if Trump had managed to overturn the election and stayed president
I think its really pretty simple. Trump was about the highest profile client one could possibly imagine, and rich to boot. The ideal client if you ignore that he doesn’t pay his bills, doesn’t listen to his lawyers, and everything he touches turns to shit. And you your eyes are filled with stars and dollar signs its easy to miss, ignore or rationalize away all the red flags.
Once you start working for him then its all just a game that you are trying to win. It doesn’t matter if the election was actually stollen [sic] or if Trump is the legitimate president, your job is to see that he gets put in office. I think being a lawyer probably helps with this. You don’t worry yourself over whether your client is actually guilty of innocent your job is to get him off. I think they got so caught up in what they were doing that they didn’t notice with they crossed the line from standard political dirty fighting to outright illegality.
I’ve read a bit of commentary about Powell, and some of her colleagues regarded her as intelligent and a good attorney. But then… something happened to her. I think I see a pattern in this. Over the past 23 years there have been a few events that have turned otherwise sensible people into whack jobs:
9/11
The election of Barak Obama
The rise of Trump
COVID-19 pandemic
In each case, I’ve known someone whose reaction to each of these events was to become a person they hadn’t been before. Or at least, one that they had previously concealed. I’d shorthand it by calling it a fear / stress reaction. People react badly when they panic. Fear turns otherwise intelligent people into bumbling idiots.
The thing is, people doing stupid things for Trump doesn’t really fit a fear reaction. It’s more like they felt empowered to indulge their baser desires after a lifetime of suppressing them. Hence all the people who crawled out of their parents’ basements to attend Charlottesville. And politicians who suddenly felt safe to back blatantly discriminatory policies. Or maybe it is a sort of fear - a fear that they’d never have a better chance to do so many taboo things.
In the end, it’s just sad. For them and everyone else. I’ve always thought the best way to confront these people is to point and laugh. The one thing people like Trump (or any strongman dictator) can’t stand is to be made to look foolish, like an object of ridicule. Maybe the threat of that would be enough to warn off people to susceptible to drinking the FlavorAid.
Oh. I guess I was misled by the phrase “blind spot when it comes to right and wrong.”
Cite on this claim about Powell? I’ve been looking and can’t find one.
Is it possible you confused her with Laura Pressley, who ran for a city council seat in Austin in 2014, then misinterpreted text on a computer printout and tried to sue, got laughed out of court, then went on to found an organization call Texas True,( dedicated to proving voting machines were rigged) and became involved with ASOG and other crazies. This is mentioned in my cite upthread.
I agree with RF’s original observation.
And don’t think that lawyers all agree as to what “the law” allows. “The law” has limited meaning absent its application to a specific situation. A good many lawyers simply try to make whatever arguments will persuade a particular decision-maker to decide in their (and their client’s) favor in a specific situation.
IMO, the system does a poor job of holding lawyers accountable for counseling/aiding/encouraging clients to do horribly disreptutable things. For the most part, disciplinary actions by state bars are a joke, and prosecution extremely rare - both most often related to the misuse of client funds. You see it occasionally, but the overriding premise is that in an adversarial system every party deserves representation.
These 2 just decided to push it further than most - or at least in a high enough profile situation with a client who was too powerful and bull-headed to plead guilty, such that everyone he came in contact with had to be indicted as well.
Memory is not perfect, so that’s quite possible. ETA: likely, even. Yeah, looks like I did get them confused.
Getting back to the OP, it’s something I’ve been shaking my head over for a long time.
You would have thunk that what happened to Michael Cohen, so very publicly, would make anyone think, “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!” And the stories, easily found, of how he stiffed so many of his own people. And the “Never knew him” defence that comes out so often.
It’s almost like being the victim of a serial abuser: “I know that he was mean to Mike Cohen. And I know that he stiffed Law firm X that won’t work for him anymore. But he’ll be different with me!”
Does Trump claiming that Powell was never his lawyer actually do anything about client privilege?
Yes, September 11th did seem to break some people (Giuliani and Dennis Miller), and the election of Obama pushed some people even further. I suppose the subject people could be some of those, and latched onto the rise of Trump as a way to bring the world back to some place before they were broken, with Trumps racist and protectionist tendencies.
I listened to a big loudmouth in a bar make exactly that argument in favor of trump not 20 minutes ago.
To some approval from fellow patrons of the disreputable dive. Except for one guy who loudly ordered a shot of brains for his friend.
Should have ordered a round for the house.
Powell had filed a motion arguing for the case to be dismissed in Georgia on the grounds that she was never Trump’s lawyer but it was denied. In a technical sense I wonder if that’s the truth.
Powell: I’m not your lawyer and this isn’t legal advince. <wink, wink>
But this is going to make an attempt by Trump to use an advice of counsel defense a bit more difficult I think.
Trump has said in the past that she was part of his legal team.
Last year, Powell said that even though Trump never paid her, he did call her for legal advice and those conversations may be subject to attorney-client privilege.
Still, when the committee asks Powell about communications she had with Trump, that is “going to get a little hairy,” Kleinhendler told CNN.
He said Powell believes that the times Trump called her to ask for legal advice may be covered by attorney-client privilege – even if he never paid her to be his or his campaign’s lawyer. Powell never worked as a lawyer for the former President personally or for the Trump campaign, Kleinhendler said.
I don’t think that whether or not Trump paid her should matter. It seems like he rarely pays his lawyers anyway.
I believe that the truth was that she was a member of his legal team at one time. She even did press conferences with the rest of his team. But she was fired because she was too crazy even for them. It might have had something to do with wanting to use someone’s dream visions as legal evidence, or who knows what.
So, they are playing a bit of revisionist history, or at least Donald is, and if she was fired early on, well then we’re just going to say she was never on the team in the first place, and was never his lawyer. But his own previous words, her own previous words, and what went on in the public eye seems to contradict that assertion.
No worries. I wasn’t clear. That could phrase could go either way.
Yeah, and that’s why I am wondering if he, and Powell previously, was trying to use some technicality baloney to get out of it. My employer has an agreement with a lawfirm to handle various issues related to employment law as well as our immigration issues. For every single new employee we sponsor for an H1-B, I sign new papework, as does the sponsorered employee, establishing who is representing whom.
But given that Trump doesn’t like his lawyers to even take notes, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if he signed no agreement with Powell. But it’s going to be awfully hard for him to refute Powell’s statement that she was his lawyer when Trump has already admitted as much in previous statements. While many members of his base might eat that up, I don’t think the jury will see it that way.
I’m going to have to ask any Trump supporter I know whether Trump is lying now about Powell’s representation of him or if he was lying back then.
I wonder if it matters if she was his lawyer or not. If ‘Joe the Plumber’ was in on the conspiracy I suspect he would be charged as well. Crime is crime.
And I think, since dolt 45 claims she was not his lawyer and she most likely has never been paid that lawyer client privilege is off the table.
That’s correct. A lawyer-client relationship is created when a person comes to a lawyers and asks for legal advice, and the lawyer gives it, knowing that the person will likely rely on that legal advice in their conduct. There is no need for a retainer agreement, or any money changing hands.
That’s why, for instance, you may have noticed that I and other lawyers on this board sometimes insert “not meant as legal advice” disclaimers. I don’t want to inadvertently create a legal relationship. I’m okay talkking about the law in general, and in fact the code of conduct I operate under says that we should help the public to understand the law, in general discussions, as a matter of public interest.
So if Trump phoned up Powell and says, " on the issue of a court challenge in state X, what are your thoughts?" and she then gives legal advice, that could well establish a lawyer-client relationship.
And if she attends a meeting in the Oval Office, where the possibility of her being appointed a Special Prosecutor is raised, and there’s a draft Exec Order to do so, and she explains why she thinks he should do it and what she then would do, that likely establishes a lawyer-client relationship, even if he ultimately doesn’t take her advice.
I’m not intimately familiar with the case, but I don’t see that it matters. As you say she could certainly be part of a conspiracy without an attorney-client relationship. I don’t know that Chesebro was ever retained by Trump either, for that matter. I think he worked for the campaign?
What if the client specifically states that the lawyer is not his lawyer? And, does the venue matter?
For example, let’s say some client, call him D. Trump. No, that’s too obvious. Let’s say Donald T. says in a public forum like Twitter that a lawyer, say Sydney P., is not his lawyer. Would that eliminate any claims of attorney client privilege?