The legal team of Steve Bannon claimed in a court filing on Friday that prosecutors last month provided more than 790 documents that “reflected efforts by the Government to obtain telephone records and email records from the personal and professional accounts of defense counsel” Robert Costello, who is one of Bannon’s three criminal defense attorneys.
Somebody sounds scared.
The Justice Department also accused Bannon of trying to whip up a media circus,
As in Trump things up?
Marcy wrote a piece about this a few days ago.
Let’s see how this all plays out. There is probably less to it than there seems. These days there is sometime a fine line between defense lawyer and co-conspirator, or fact witness, especially when you are dealing with Republican operatives. They are sort of like mob lawyers. They are often up to their eyeballs in the criminal activity.
Also.
Bannon and his lawyers seem a bit desperate.
Bannon is as usual trying to throw sand into the machinery of democracy. Costello has put himself in a fix. I don’t know what it is about the lawyers for the trumpies but they aren’t all models of judicial probity.
So many hats to wear: one for the client, one for the judge, the rest for me. It’s getting harder to know which one looks best.
MAGA - Make attorneys Get Attorneys. (My husband laughed when I told him that yesterday.)
How true it has come to be.
It’s gone a step further: When Lawyers’ Lawyers Need Lawyers: The Import of Robert Costello’s Toll Records — for Bannon, for Rudy, and for Donald Trump
From that article:
At the time Costello gave the interviews, his representation of Bannon before the January 6 Select Committee was ended and Bannon had not yet been indicted. And as the first 302 notes, “there were no agreements or conditions governing the conversation between COSTELLO and representatives of USAO-DC or FBI.” Effectively, those interviews made Costello a voluntary fact-witness in the criminal case against Bannon, one exacerbated when Bannon belatedly added Costello to his criminal defense team and grew squishy about whether Bannon would invoke Costello’s advice in his own defense.
And Costello made so many contradictory claims in his 302s (to say nothing of providing evidence that Bannon knew well he had no privilege claim with which to refuse to testify entirely), that it is unsurprising that the FBI made records requests to test whether Costello lied in those interviews to the FBI. Among the claims Costello made about communications he had or did not have are:
- J6 sent the subpoena to Costello (on September 23) before he had been able to consult with Bannon
- Costello did not know who was representing the other people subpoenaed — Dan Scavino, Kash Patel, Mark Meadows, or Donald Trump — at the time of the subpoena
- Through the entire subpoena response, Bannon and Costello have “operated independently of the others subpoenaed”
- Costello was not told who was representing Trump, Meadows, or the others subpoenaed, but he found out on his own who represented Trump and Meadows
- Costello sent the subpoena to Bannon to review
- Costello’s advice to Bannon that he didn’t have to respond was verbal
- Costello was sure he sent the J6 letters to Bannon; he wasn’t sure whether Bannon read the letters but Costello did quote lines from the letters to him
- Costello sent Bannon an email that he ended with the word BEWARE because defying the subpoena could result in a referral to DOJ
- Costello’s only contact with J6 Chief Counsel Kristin Amerling came the day before and the day of the subpoena service [the record shows she sent him at least one letter after that]
- Costello tried to contact the attorney he believed was representing Trump (whom he didn’t name) but that attorney referred Costello to Justin Clark
- Costello reached out to Clark a few days before October 6, though their first substantive conversation came when Clark responded
- Costello did not provide any documents to attorneys for Trump for an Executive Privilege review
- Justin Clark was vague but Costello was sure Trump asserted Executive Privilege with regards to Bannon
- Clark would not ID for Costello what would be covered under Executive Privilege
- In spite of Costello’s claims not to have consulted with any Trump lawyer, he also claimed that Clark told him not to respond to item 17 on the subpoena (covering Mike Flynn), because lawyers like Rudy Giuliani might have been present when Bannon communicated with Flynn
- In spite of his admitted conversations with Justin Clark, Costello claimed he had not had communications with attorneys for Trump prior to October 18, 2021 (when Trump filed a lawsuit challenging the privilege waivers on materials from the Archives)
- Costello had “an email or two” with Clark, who he believed filed the lawsuit, but he did not learn until later that Jesse Binnall filed the lawsuit
- Costello sent copies of Bennie Thompson’s letters to the VA lawyer representing Trump (probably Binnall)
- Costello had no advance knowledge of Trump’s lawsuit and would have handled things differently if he had
- Attorneys representing Trump (Costello doesn’t name him or describe when this was) told him everyone who got a subpoena would get Executive Privilege
- Costello did not talk about “disposing of any documents requested in the … subpoena with any attorneys who represented former President TRUMP”
- Costello said he’d sent to USAO all memorializations of communications he had with the Committee, Clark, and Trump’s attorneys
Of course any charges or subpoenas or whateve are trumped up actions by evil antifa inspired illegal prosecutor… err … persecutors …
“As in Trump things up”.
(((snicker)))
Good one @maximus … I’d been waiting for that.
Making attorneys’ attorneys get attorneys.
For starters, they doubtless meet Donnie’s definition of “the best people,” which we should know, by now, means there’s something seriously bent about them.
MAAGA? 
What is a “memorialization”? A tombstone? A nice gold encrusted brass plaque fit for poolside at Mar-a-Lago?
What I get out of this story is that the government has requested documents related to Robert Costello. It doesn’t even say whether or not the government has obtained these documents. I suppose if you’re addressing an audience that believes any and all actions by the government must be ominous then this would work but, really?
As all lawyers (well, perhaps not Rudy) learned in their evidence and legal ethics classes, there is an exception to attorney-client privilege… when the communication involves an ongoing or future crime.
So it looks like the consiglieri will get to see what the client is facing.
Of course there is the Fifth Amendment and/or the Gym Jordan “I forgot “ defense.
Memorialization - notes to file, sending yourself an email of your notes for later, something TFG puts in a burn bag or tears up.