Trump “raped” his phony doctor, who now says his glowing health letter was dictated for him.
He says he’s very disappointed in Trump. Since I feel he was part of the problem, my tears for him are few.
Just one more person pulled into Trump’s orbit and tossed out as a stained wash rag.
Too bad there are millions more eager to take his place.
The rape comment was about Trump’s bodyguard and lawyer taking Trump’s medical records from his office.
There is a legal way to get medical records. But this is just another example of how Trump doesn’t care about legalities or ethics or anything else when he wants something done.
Also, I’m sure some of this sudden turnaround is sour grapes. Borstein(?) was angling for the position that Adm. Jackson held until very recently and the “confiscation” of the records was pretty much Trump’s usual dickhole way of saying “Nope.”
Trump has body guards? He has the Secret Service. Was this a Secret Service agent? If not, is the body guard a government employee or paid personally by Trump? Does this body guard have a security clearance?
Were these medical records in the White House? Trump’s former personal doctor (former) had an office there?
Who was this lawyer? Government payroll? Security Clearance? Medical is protected, was there a search warrant? Did Trump authorize the seizure?
Why were the medical records taken?
Does anybody know what’s going on? (musical lyric)
The bodyguard in question is Keith Schiller, who predates Trump’s presidency and was on the White House payroll from his inauguration until relatively recently.
Still on the payroll, via an intermediary (the RNC):
RNC Paid Trump Bodyguard Keith Schiller $15,000 a Month From 'Slush Fund'
In addition, Schiller’s legal fees are being underwritten by the Trump Campaign:
Trump campaign paid Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller's lawyers, records show
Keith ain’t a-gonna spill any beans. Or not as long as his loyalty is being assured.
I don’t completely get the controversy over Trump dictating his own letter. I needed a doctor’s letter for a trip I took several years ago. I didn’t even have a regular physician at the time. I found one, he examined me, and asked me to write the letter, so I did. “I have examined [real name] and found him to be healthy and fit for the conditions of the trip in question”, something like that. And the doctor signed it.
If anything in Trump’s letter wasn’t true, his doctor didn’t have to sign it.
Isn’t there some rule/regulation/law regarding lawyers representing their client, not the person paying them?
Something that’s being missed in this latest kerfuffle is that while this news is only just coming out now, the confiscation/raid/“records retrieval” (whatever someone wants to call it) on the doctor’s office occurred about a year ago.
Dr. Fabio is kicking his little heels now because he’s jumping on the bandwagon. I have no idea if there’s anything against medical ethics in letting your patient dictate his own letter claiming he’s got the “best health ever,” but it sure seems like there oughtta be.
Good question (and catch). The only thing that comes to my non-attorney mind is various warnings in fictional depictions of trials, in which a hapless defendant doesn’t realize his lawyer isn’t representing him as zealously as would be ideal, due to having loyalty to the person paying the fees. If the person paying the fees is actually a party involved in the case, that would seem to be an obvious conflict that would be considered to be improper.
Looks as though state bars rule on this, or at least suggest professional standards, as described on this Kansas site:
https://www.spencerfane.com/publication/lawyers-in-the-middle-the-three-way-tension-among-lawyers-clients-and-fee-payers/
Attorneys, how about it?
Seriously? This ain’t a trip to do a bit of hiking. This is the President of the United States. And the letter is clearly written by Don the con himself. That a Doctor would sign off on that he would be the ‘most healthy president ever’ (anyone every look at Obama?). It’s just a flat out lie. Representing him as his doctor, he signed it.
Sheeessss. It’s just more bullshit that this administration started with and continues with.
It’s certainly against medical ethics, and against the law, to tell the press the medications that your patient takes, like Dr Bighair did when he said that Trump takes Propecia.
There’s a significant difference between a doctor saying a presidential candidate is healthy enough to hold the office and the candidate himself, under an assumed name, saying he is healthy enough to hold the office.
That depends. Even if the actual wording of the release came from Trump, or someone on his campaign team, did it get the doctor’s blessing before it was released or not? The part I heard about was that it was dictated to the doctor inside Trump’s limousine. I assumed that the doctor then signed the statement, or had it typed on his letterhead, or something that indicated that he’d read it and was releasing it with his approval.
If that’s not what happened, why did the campaign go to all the trouble of travelling to the doc’s office? If it’s a complete fabrication, that’s totally unethical on Trump’s part, but I wonder why the doc kept quiet all this time. If he willingly signed his name to someone else’s words, he doesn’t have much right to complain about it now.
There was another case where I needed a doctor to assert that my mother’s condition was sufficiently grave in order for her long-term care insurance to kick in. I can’t remember if I got a form from the insurer, or if I typed up something that met the wording of her policy. I took it to her doctor and he signed it. If he didn’t agree with what it said, he shouldn’t have.
Busy people have other people draft their public statements all the time. It’s funny to think that the doctor was too busy to write a statement on Trump’s health, but Trump wasn’t. Once you put your name on it (if that’s what Dr. Bornstein did), it’s yours.
It’s very clear that Bornstein “owned” the document. He not only signed it, but defended the wording in the press afterward.
It was pretty obvious to most that Trump ( possibly a Trump lackey, but there is clearly Trumpian input) dictated the letter. It’s also pretty obvious that Bornstein was a fanboy (he had a picture of himself and Trump hanging in his office, fer chrissakes!), and I personally doubt there was much arm-twisting involved in that interaction. I hadn’t thought he was angling as high as White House Physician, but he clearly had stars in his eyes. And, yes, his current statements have a lot of sour grapes involved; sour wine, actually, I wonder why he waited so long.
As I said, my tears for him are few.
Lastly, as others have noted, it was a breach of confidentiality to broadcast Trump’s prescription. That would be true for a celebrity or politician and it would be equally true for a private citizen, such as any of us. I would have trouble understanding how Dr. Bornstein doesn’t see that, but I think he’s (at least) a bit ethically challenged, although I can’t say much about his actual practice of medicine. Hence, my earlier (hyperbolic) statement, “phony doctor”.
Presumably, his cheque never materialized.
Maybe it got stuck in the funnel.
Signing it means he owns it, sure. But he lied about having written it.
Plus the document itself is just bad. It’s bad that he signed it, but it’s also bad that someone wrote it. It doesn’t actually in any way accomplish the goal of such documents, and says things that make the doctor sound like an idiot.
As for the Propecia thing: two wrongs don’t make a right. They still don’t have the right to raid his office like that. They violated the same HIPAA that the doctor did. They were going through other people’s records. And it’s unclear if Trump signed anything to even give them permission to look at his records.
Well, yes. There are remedies for privacy violations, and sending in the goon squad to collect your records (signature or not) is not one of those.*
I guess that’s why I posted about it in this thread in the first place. It was one more thing Trump has done that pisses me off. That probably got lost a bit in the “victim-blaming” I was doing with regards to Bornstein, for which I’m not apologizing.
*I’ll bet my back teeth that there’s stuff in those records that Trump does not want seeing the light of day, at any cost. Given his nature, probably just boner pills. But given the room for speculation, my mind roams to darker things. Maybe some device or procedure to deal with short fingers (or other extremities)? I’m just asking questions…
The lies and contradictions continue to accumulate as to the pre-Election Day porn-star payoff: https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/03/politics/rudy-giuliani-donald-trump-legal-team-disarray/index.html