Tag: Trump lawyers

Trump’s impeachment defense: Who is paying the president’s lawyers?

Washington Post logoAs President Trump faces mounting legal bills from his impeachment trial, he is drawing on national party coffers flush with donations from energized supporters — unlike the last president to be impeached, who left the White House “dead broke.”

The Republican National Committee is picking up the tab for at least two of Trump’s private attorneys in the ongoing trial, an arrangement that differs from the legal fund President Bill Clinton set up, only to see it fail to raise enough to cover his millions of dollars in bills before he left office.

The law firms of Trump’s lead lawyer, Jay Sekulow, and attorney Jane Raskin have received $225,000 from the RNC through November, according to the most recent campaign finance reports. The party will pay the duo for their work this month and probably into February as the trial continues, according to people familiar with the arrangement who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal financing. Continue reading.

A ‘minor player’ and a ‘shiny object’: Trump’s legal team tries to explain away Rudy Giuliani

Washington Post logoFor months, there have been whispers and prognostications about whether President Trump’s impeachment legal team would throw his most visible personal attorney under the bus. It got to the point where Rudolph W. Giuliani quipped that if it did, he had very good (health) insurance.

Trump’s legal team may not have thrown Giuliani under the bus Monday, but it sure seemed to try to push him to the side — somewhat implausibly.

Trump lawyer Jane Raskin appeared on the Senate floor to offer a lengthy defense of Giuliani’s work, all while emphasizing that he was a “minor player” and a “shiny object” that Democrats were using to distract people. Continue reading.

Legal scholars explain why John Bolton’s book could expose Trump lawyers to criminal liability

AlterNet logoOver the weekend, Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt reported in the New York Times that former National Security Adviser John Bolton — in an unpublished  manuscript of his new book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” due out March 17 — asserts that President Donald Trump and his allies directly tied military aid to Ukraine with an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. This was the “quid pro quo” that House Democrats alleged during their impeachment hearings last year and continue to allege in Trump’s impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate. And legal writer Jerry Lambe, in an article for Law & Crime, reports that the Bolton’s assertion might subject Trump’s lawyers to criminal exposure.

“The threshold question is whether the president’s attorneys were aware of the information contained in the manuscript,” Lambe explains. “According to a letter from Bolton’s attorney, Charles J. Cooper, the White House was made aware of the book on December 30. The bombshell revelations reportedly therein could not only change tenor of the Senate trial by forcing the chamber to hear from witnesses such as Bolton — they may place the president’s impeachment attorneys in a precarious position.”

On Sunday night, attorney Mark S. Zaid tweeted, “At least some members of Trump’s legal team also likely knew of Bolton’s knowledge which, if so, potentially subjects them to criminal perjury charges or legal disciplinary actions for their statements before the Senate.” Continue reading.

Law professor blows up Trump defense team’s 2 most ‘egregious constitutional claims’: They ‘have impeachment exactly backwards’

AlterNet logoWriting for Just Security on Friday, Frank O. Bowman III, a legal expert and professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, detailed two of the “more egregious constitutional claims” put forth by Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team in a trial brief filed last week.

The 171-page brief, which reminded one law professor of the president’s public “tantrums,” outlined the defense team’s case against two articles of impeachment filed by the House of Representatives earlier this month. According to Bowman, the defense brief includes two glaring errors that give more credence to the House charges against the president: 1 — that the president can only be impeached “for violations of ‘known and established law,’” and 2 — that “impeachment for ‘abuse of power’ is ‘made-up,’ ‘unprecedented,’ and unconstitutional.”

On the first point, Bowman writes the defense brief intimates that “the law violated must be criminal” in order to be impeachable. Bowman notes that Alan Dershowitz, one of the president’s impeachment defense attorneys, has repeatedly made, and will continue to make, the case that “impeachment requires proof of crime or ‘crime-like conduct.’” Continue reading.

Schiff: Trump lawyers ‘deathly afraid’ of witnesses

“I think they’re deathly afraid of what witnesses will have to say and so their whole strategy has been deprive the public of a fair trial,” he said on NBC.

The leader of the House impeachment case said Sunday that President Donald Trump’s defense team is “deathly afraid” of possible testimony from key witnesses in a Senate trial.

“I think they’re deathly afraid of what witnesses will have to say and so their whole strategy has been deprive the public of a fair trial,” House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They don’t frame it that way, but that’s in essence it.”

Democrats have argued that officials with potential firsthand knowledge of Trump’s decision to hold up military aid to Ukraine should testify in the trial. Those possible witnesses include acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton. Continue reading.

Trump’s lawyers are also on trial

The president’s impeachment trial has revealed a common Trump theme: The lawyers he brings in to defend his behavior end up in their own legal morass.

They’ve been accused of orchestrating a criminal conspiracy. They’ve been dubbed ethically compromised. They’ve been labeled liars. They could even be called to testify in the impeachment case they were hired to combat.

In the opening days of Donald Trump’s Senate trial, it has at times felt like the president’s lawyers are his co-defendants.

“Nonsense,” said Jay Sekulow, the longest-serving personal attorney to Trump, when asked about the litany of allegations flying around Capitol Hill. Continue reading.

House Intel to probe whether lawyers for Trump family interfered in investigation

The House Intelligence Committee is investigating whether attorneys representing both President Trump and his family obstructed the panel’s investigation into Russian interference by shaping or editing false testimony.

Documents show that the panel, led by Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), sent requests for documents and testimony from the president’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow and three others earlier this year in connection with the investigation into whether they edited or shaped former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s 2017 false statements to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow proposal.

The committee is particularly interested in hearing from Sekulow; Alan Futerfas, Donald Trump Jr.‘s attorney; Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s top lawyer; and Abbe Lowell, Ivanka Trump‘s attorney. 

View the complete May 14 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Trump’s Lawyers Want Him to Refuse an Interview in Russia Inquiry

The following article by Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman was posted on the New York Times website February 5, 2018:

John Dowd, the longtime Washington lawyer hired last summer to represent President Trump in the Russia investigation, wants Mr. Trump to rebuff an interview request from the special counsel. Credit: Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters

WASHINGTON — Lawyers for President Trump have advised him against sitting down for a wide-ranging interview with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to four people briefed on the matter, raising the specter of a monthslong court battle over whether the president must answer questions under oath.

His lawyers are concerned that the president, who has a history of making false statements and contradicting himself, could be charged with lying to investigators. Their stance puts them at odds with Mr. Trump, who has said publicly and privately that he is eager to speak with Mr. Mueller as part of the investigation into possible ties between his associates and Russia’s election interference, and whether he obstructed justice. Continue reading “Trump’s Lawyers Want Him to Refuse an Interview in Russia Inquiry”