The legal team is in a kind of catch-22. The more they know about what trump has done, the more legal jeopardy they are in when he asks them to commit ongoing crimes on his behalf. If they don’t know, they can fall back on the ignorance defense. And the ones who are white house counsel are in an even more difficult position, because they work for the office of the president, not for some mobbed-up former six-bit real estate grifter.
So Mueller almost certainly knows more than they do, and their problem is figuring out how much more.
The main problem is that they have a client who won’t tell them anything more than “No Collusion!1!” Even laypeople like me know that to defend your client effectively, he or she needs to level with you about what they did and when they did it – or at least be smart enough to say what the prosecution might have on them. Unfortunately, they have Donald Trump, officially the World’s Worst Client™,
Woodward, in his book Fear, seems to side with Dowd, that there is no there in Mueller’s investigation and that any interview with Trump by Mueller would result in perjury charges because he makes stuff up when he doesn’t remember. Is this a tactic of Woodward to get an interviewers’ cooperation?
Woodward confirmed this attitude yesterday on NPR with IIRC, Joshua Johnson, who asked if he thought Manafort gave up incriminating info on Trump. Woodward answered, not necessarily so. I think he went on to say something to the effect of the Trump line, they weren’t close, etc.
I’m convinced Trump lies to everybody including family and his legal team. Ignoring wealthy clients lies and moral failings is how top defense lawyers get paid over a thousand dollars an hour.
Mueller ALSO knows what Trump’s penis looks like. Because we all do. That’s the world we live in now. I don’t like it.
Goddammit Stormy, you beautiful bastard. What have you done? So many people cringing and shuddering at once; the planet’s going to shake its way out of orbit and fly into the sun, and nothing of value will be lost
Trump can probably guess what Manafort knows. That has him sleeping even less at night, and I’m happy that someone put some kind of fear into him about using Twitter.
I would bet money that Trump would never be able to admit the full truth to anybody. He’s trained his mind to always hold back on anything that would implicate him. It’s like an invasive disease by now. I think the bigger story is why any lawyer would want to attach themselves to this man at this point.
It appears that Trump’s lawyers know much less than Mueller & Co., otherwise known as opposing counsel. That’s not a good position from which to play defense in legal proceedings.
I read Trump was recently informed that Ty Cobb was a lawyer for the White House, and not his personal lawyer, and therefore what they spoke about wasn’t privileged. Evidently Trump blanched and said “I told him a lot of things.” Heh.
They know much more than I ever thought they knew…
According to the journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear, Manafort is not alone in having a deal with Trump. Thirty-seven witnesses who have been called to testify so far in the Mueller inquiry are part of a joint-defense agreement with the president, which allows them to share details about what they told the special counsel. Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal attorney and fixer, also had an agreement with Trump, but he backed out earlier this summer when he decided to cooperate with New York prosecutors. Trump and Manafort Are Coordinating in the Russia Probe - The Atlantic
How can that possibly be true when something like 37 of them have signed a joint defense agreement? Is there something I am missing? Don’t all this lawyers talk about everything with each other?
