Or he decided to work with Donald for free because they’re both really really really nice guys.
That’s too good hahahaha
O. My. God.
This is a serious black eye for Skadden. The profits per partner at Skadden are high enough that the amount paid by the Ukraine for this white wash is barely a rounding error (around $1 million or so) to their bottom line.
Well… he asked for a kitten photo
…and butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. hahahaha
How’s that? More pressure being applied to Manafort is anything but good for PP, and I have no idea how this could negatively effect Mueller.
I’m as pure as the driven slush.
Me neither. There are two grand juries working away and there is no stopping this now.
and @antisachetdethe You are exactly no better than you have to be and that’s perfect.
As Mae West once said, “When I’m good, I’m Great! When I’m bad – I’m even better.”
Thing is, I kind of get how it happened. Being a big law firm means representing a lot of sketchy or even odious clients because that’s the job and it’s easy to kind of become inured to it. W
And in this business, people used to think there was no such thing as bad publicity for the lawyers from a business perspective and the bigger the mess, the better the lawyers need to be and that’s why it’s kind of a compliment to be chosen. The way representing Trump or one of his associates has turned into business development poison has to have come as a shock to a lot these firms. Not a thing we’re used to seeing. And also, everyone deserves representation, especially the ones who don’t show up on A/R aging reports, and it’s kind of immoral for us to refuse to help someone just because their cause is odious. And anyway, in 2014, no one, left, right or center, wanted to acknowledge that Cold War II had already started.
So, not making apologies, but I can see how it showed up on the items on a daily conflict check email and didn’t make much of an impression on anyone at the time. And certainly, the nature of the work assignment would not have been discussed in sufficient detail to make anyone want to take the very confrontational, enemy-making step of saying “ummm, is it really in the firm’s best interests, from a PR and business development to be representing these guys?” Because that’s a real slippery slope for any firm, much less a gigafirm.
But the most important rule in this business is that the client’s shit is the client’s shit, not our shit, and we can’t ever make it ours or let any of it get onto us, because that’s how we end up as some other lawyer’s client. Somehow, though, the Skadden lawyers working on this matter failed to grasp that they were actually being engaged not to help a client out of, or to at least manage, its own shit, but, rather to roll around in their client’s shit and get it all over them.
Oh I get how it happened. Every partner at Skadden has to keep the wheels turning in order to keep profits up. Somebody saw this as an opportunity for an easy mill. The problem I have – and that someone at Skadden should have considered --is that their client was just looking for public relations, preferably with a stamp of approval by a law firm with a sterling reputation. The government of the Ukraine wasn’t in legal jeopardy, it didn’t need a good lawyer. It needed someone who would white wash their particular form of tyranny. By putting its name on that report, Skadden endorsed the tyranny. I don’t care if that wasn’t what it intended to do. It makes me think less of them,not that they care much what I think.
It seems that even a few Republicans have come to that same conclusion.
I expect the next several weeks to be full of bobbing and weaving and harrumphing by all the usual right-wing suspects—none of whom will have the intellectual wherewithal to be truthful or honest about any of it.
Mueller has them all petrified, and it won’t be long until the leaks become a torrent and the dam breaks.
Then it will be first come, first served, and devil take the hindmost.
If we’re truly lucky, this will come to a head about the end of May to the middle of June—just in time to create a Democratic wave election. You can tell this is coming because the media is restarting its “Dems in Disarray” meme again.
Dog knows the Dems can’t seem to get a good simple national message together for everyone to repeat ad infinitum ad nauseum—but I do believe the mid-terms are shaping up to be a real barn burner, and it’s the GOP barn that is going to be on fire.
Yeah it is - and the GOP keeps throwing more kerosene on it. Today my odious representative, Jeb Hensarling, made Rawstory for saying: “Hurricane’s are God’s way of telling you to move.” So I sent him a fax and said Dear Rep. Jackass: where do you expect the inhabitants of the Caribbean to relocate? And do you know how they got there in the first place? They were transported there as slaves, you complete idiot. And are you expecting the City of Houston to get up and move?
But basically none of them can keep their stupid mouths’ shut either, so if it isn’t a barn burner, something is very very very wrong and I think I will simply flee if we don’t get power back.
That’s what I meant by their having violated the first rule. Somehow, they failed to notice that their whole assignment consisted of rubbing the client’s shit onto themselves. It’s a cautionary tale.