You and me both. :mad: Especially since I’ve long maintained that without Bush, we would never have had Trump.
Rudy Giuliani: So Batshit and Reckless, He Scares John Bolton.
IANAL, but this article (written during the Mueller investigation) lays out several situations in which attorney-client privilege would not apply, which may be relevant in regards to what Giuliani was doing. The article notes:
Some specific things which the article calls out, that would apparently not be covered by attorney-client privilege, include:
- communications between a client and attorney for the purpose of committing, continuing, or advancing an illegal or fraudulent act
- presence of “non-clients” during such conversations/communications
It also notes that a “government attorney” would not be bound by attorney-client privilege if called to testify about potentially illegal activities. Of course, Giuliani isn’t a government attorney, but Trump’s personal attorney.
IANAL, but can an attorney cite “privilege” if he is covering up his own crimes, or those of his client? If an attorney and his client are believed to be engaged in criminal activities, and the attorney is refusing to provide documents that have been subpoenaed, I really don’t think that can just be handwaved away by “privilege”
Not to my knowledge, also not a lawyer. This is one of those exceptions to privilege.
It depends. If the documents are text messages showing the client talking with his attorney about their legal strategy, then yes, that would generally be privileged. Ostensibly the confidentiality is to be encouraged so that the client is honest so that the attorney can best represent the client. If the documents show the client and attorney conspiring to commit some crime or tort, then privilege is waived.
Normally there is a special master or neutral judge who can view the messages in camera to determine whether they are privileged or not. You may remember that federal prosecutors brought in a special prosecutor to go over Michael Cohen’s documents and sort out the privileged ones.
Notably, the Congress can’t really call itself a neutral special master. So if we’re talking about potentially withholding documents from Congress based on attorney-client privilege, I think it’s ridiculous for Congress to charge Mr. Giuliani with contempt over that. They could very well ask the courts to appoint a special master.
~Max
He’s refusing to cooperate.
Well, also on point is the little thing where Rudy went on record numerous times stating that in his Ukrainian dealings, he wasn’t acting as Trump’s attorney.
He corrected it each time by saying the opposite immediately after.
Well, I guess normally there is no occasion to question a claim of attorney-client privilege. The only exceptions I can think of are like, Cohen and mobsters.
And the privilege is the client’s to claim or waive, not the attorney’s.
~Max
Says who?
And frankly, it barely matters. How in the world is Giuliani lobbying foreign government officials the act of a personal lawyer?
IANAL either, but attorney-client privilege has a number of exceptions AIUI.
You are correct that a party cannot cite privilege for a corrupt purpose, such as covering up his/her crimes. A lawyer cannot assert privilege for aiding his/her client to commit crimes. It’s known as the crime-fraud exception. That’s why State Department employees are ignoring Trump’s assertion of blanket privilege: First, there is no such thing as blanket privilege, and second, they are citing the crime-fraud exception.
A party cannot cite privilege for information that is already in the public record. The privilege is waived as soon as the information is put out for public consumption. This is why Trump is going to lose his executive privilege assertion with respect to Don McGahn’s testimony. The information is already in the public record via the Mueller report.
A party cannot cite privilege just because a conversation was had. Example: You meet your lawyer in an elevator. You say, “Nice day!” Your lawyer replies, “It is!” That is not privileged communication. So in the context of Rudy and Trump, anything they are doing that is not specifically related to Rudy advising Trump on how to respond to legal jeopardy has no basis for privilege – as CarnalK notes. The communication must be for the purpose of obtaining legal advice.
I’m sure a Doper attorney can expand on all this further, but I’m fairly sure there is no privilege that can attach to Rudy’s shenanigans for Trump in Ukraine.
One or two, sure, and they tinkered with them until they felt confident a whole squadron’s worth was worth buying. Plus you didn’t address my comment that the attempted purchase of Turkey’s squadron was vetoed by Trump.
Congress should add Trump’s connections to Reza Zarrab onto the pile:
Who would have ever suspected that his tax documents contain inconsistencies?
I wonder what inconsistencies were in the documents that were shredded in Panama? In an even earlier report - Report: Trump Panama Tower ‘Riddled’ With Drug, Mob Money.
The F-35 topic has become a distraction. I intended to offer up another data point about how messy and bureaucratic foreign military sales can be, but at this point it’s become a distraction from the main topic of the thread. I’d suggest we drop that particular example (unless you want to open up a separate thread to discuss it) and focus on my central points, which were:
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Less than 10 weeks from “we are almost ready to buy more Javelins” to “Trump admin approves new sale of anti-tank weapons to Ukraine” seems pretty reasonable to me.
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There is no evidence of “the president putting the brakes on a $39 million dollar Javelin purchase”.
But he did have the aid stopped, speaking of thread back on track.
Maybe - just maybe – this White House views giving out $400 million in foreign aid differently than Ukraine putting down $39 million cash on the barrel to buy something from the American defense industry.
Crazy idea, huh?
There were two separate financial transactions at issue. I tried to make this clear in post #2659. The first one, the $391M in aid, was not mentioned on the call and it’s been reported that Ukraine wasn’t even aware it was being delayed. The second one, a purchase of $39M worth of Javelin missiles, was referenced on the call and appears to have proceeded without any obvious delay, or at least no evidence has been presented that “the president [was] putting the brakes on a $39 million dollar Javelin purchase”.
You can’t revise history like that. Trump talked about how generous the US was in relation to Europe. It’s laughable that this was not a reference to the aid that Congress directed to be provided to Ukraine. I mean, like out-of-this-planet whackiness to suggest that the comments were about something else.
And, of course, true to form, Trump was lying on the phone call when he talked about the U.S. being more generous than Europe.
It’s been reported that Ukraine knew that the aid was contingent on several things. Corrupt things.
You’re obviously entitled to your own opinions about what is “laughable” or “out-of-this-planet whackiness”, but I’ll repost my thoughts on the relevant portions of the call ‘transcript’ here:
It seems neither one of us is likely to change our mind about this point, so perhaps its best if we just drop it.