Friday Talking Points (478) -- Seeking Lead Lawyer For Difficult Client

[ChrisWeigant]

By Trumpian standards, this has been a relatively quiet week. After all, the president only fired a single cabinet secretary, and zero high-ranking aides! Plus, Trump hasn't attacked Stormy Daniels on Twitter even once, after her bombshell interview on 60 Minutes last Sunday. For Trump, this shows some newfound restraint.

Of course, everything is relative. Perhaps Trump is hunkering down in a desperate attempt to convince a high-profile lawyer (or even just any lawyer) to join his shrinking legal team. It would be kind of hard to interview new lawyers when you're making news by publicly and personally attacking Stormy Daniels, for obvious reasons. Trump's legal team these days is down to the bare bones, after one lawyer quit last week and his replacement decided at the very last minute that he had "conflicts" and couldn't accept the job after all. Superlawyer Ted Olson also piled on, in an interview explaining why he wasn't exactly rushing to join the Trump White House:

I think everybody would agree: This is turmoil, it's chaos, it's confusion, it's not good for anything. We always believe that there should be an orderly process, and, of course, government is not clean or orderly ever. But this seems to be beyond normal.

There was one other danger signal for any lawyer contemplating joining Trump's legal team last week, when Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin seemed not to remember what the Supreme Court did in the 1990s. Here is Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace trying to school Mnuchin on the history of the line-item veto:

(TREASURY SECRETARY STEVE MNUCHIN: ) As you heard him say, he's not planning on {signing an omnibus budget bill} again. I think they should give the president a line-item veto. These things should be looked at....

(CHRIS WALLACE: ) But that's been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, sir.

(MNUCHIN: ) Well, again, Congress could pass a rule, okay, that allows them to do it. But....

(WALLACE: ) No, no, sir, it would {need to} be a constitutional amendment.

(MNUCHIN: ) Chris, we don't, we don't need to get into a debate in terms of -- there's different ways of doing this.

Then, instead of admitting that Wallace was right and the idea had already failed at the highest level, the White House doubled down on it afterwards, bizarrely stating: "There are certain things being discussed with respect to House and Senate rules."

What lawyer in his right mind would want to go work for this bunch, really? They don't even seem to understand what the Supreme Court's role is in our government, which is a fairly dangerous thing to say about a presidential administration.

The Washington Post, in the story of lawyer Joseph diGenova backing out of joining Trump's legal team, pointed out the new reality of Trump's current situation:

Trump is now left, at least temporarily, without a traditional criminal defense attorney as {Robert} Mueller's team appears to be entering a critical phase in its investigation into Moscow's interference in the 2016 election and whether the president's campaign cooperated with Russia in this effort.

That bit about the special counsel refers to the fact that Mueller filed a court document this week which draws a much more direct line between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence services than ever previously revealed. Mueller has played his cards incredibly close to his vest all along, meaning this is the most significant card he's yet laid on the table.

Trump, of course, insists that everything is peachy, and that every lawyer on the face of the planet is clamoring to work for him. His tweets on the subject bear no connection to reality, which is about par for the course for Trump.

Axios notes a pattern to Trump's behavior:

Trump often gets agitated -- and stirred to action -- by random things he hears on TV or from shoot-the-bull conversations with friends.... It drives staff nuts because they are responding to things that are either inaccurate, highly distorted or flat-out don't exist.

So really, what lawyer in his or her right mind wouldn't want Trump as a client? As Warren Zevon once famously sang: "Send lawyers, guns, and money / The shit has hit the fan."

(Editorial sidebar: Amusingly enough, the lyrics to that song begin with the verse:

Well, I went home with the waitress
The way I always do
How was I to know
She was with the Russians, too

Coincidence? You decide. Heh.)

In other fun Trump legal news, it was reported this week that ousted Trump lawyer John Dowd was floating the possibility of presidential pardons last summer to both Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn. This was before either man had been charged by Mueller, mind you.

And another legal hassle has been added to the growing pile at Trump's feet, as a federal judge ruled that Maryland and the District of Columbia do have standing to sue Trump over his abuse of the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution. D.C. and Maryland both own convention centers, and they're claiming a financial loss as foreign groups flock to the Trump Hotel in order to curry favor with the president. Trump has not fully divested himself from the business, which leaves him open to the claim that he's profiting off of foreign states.

Another bizarre legal twist comes from the "Pharma Bro" case. Martin Shkreli was forced to give up $7 million as a result of his conviction, which included the only copy of the Wu Tang Clan album Once Upon A Time In Shaolin (which Shkreli bought for $2 million). So now the fate of the album will be decided by that well-known music industry expert and hip-hop aficionado, Jeff Sessions. We'd give good money to be a fly on the wall if Sessions sits down to listen to the whole album.

What else? Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has officially thrown in the towel on the court case against him, and will hold the special elections that he's been resisting (in an unconstitutional and illegal fashion). So at least there's one Republican who realizes when it's time to stop the court battles.

Rumors circulated this week that Paul Ryan would either not seek re-election or would just step down immediately, but his office has denied them. We wrote about this earlier in the week in more detail, if anyone's interested.

Mike Pence tried to send out a condolence message on the death of civil rights hero Linda Brown (whose name you know from the milestone court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka). Pence tried to offer up some cheap platitudes, but Twitter fired back immediately, shaming Pence for (among other things) spending a whole lot of taxpayer money to travel to a football game just so he could walk out when some black players took a knee for the national anthem. The moral of the story: You can choose to honor civil rights heroes, or you can denounce civil rights protesters, but you really can't try to do both without exposing your own massive hypocrisy.

And, to close on, Hope Hicks spent her final day on the job in the Trump White House this week. Meaning it can now accurately be said that the White House is officially Hopeless.





Before we get to the main award, we have a collective Honorable Mention for teachers' Unions. After the success of the West Virginia teachers' strike, teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and Kentucky are also demanding better pay and threatening walkouts. Union power has not been flexed in such a fashion in a long time in this country, so it is a welcome change to see teachers standing together to force change for the better. More power to the teachers, and we certainly wish them success in their respective movements.

This week, we have a 17-way tie for the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. Congress loves to make workplace laws for every workplace in America -- except their own. So they have a Byzantine system for reporting sexual harassment that obviously needs updating. The House has actually moved forward to update the procedures, and bring them into line with what any corporation would be doing in the #MeToo era. The Senate, however, punted doing anything.

So all 22 female senators -- 17 Democrats and 5 Republicans -- signed a letter to both (male) Senate leaders demanding action. In it, they wrote:

Survivors who have bravely come forward to share their stories have brought to light just how widespread harassment and discrimination continue to be throughout Capitol Hill. No longer can we allow the perpetrators of these crimes to hide behind a 23-year-old law.

What is especially striking about this letter is that it is gender-based, instead of partisan. All the women senators signed it, from both sides of the aisle.

They are right. The rules need to change, and be brought into line with what every workplace in America needs to have in place. No more "everyone has to do it this way... except us, of course" skullduggery.

While we do salute the Republican women who signed the letter, the award's criteria are specific, so we can only give the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week to the 17 Democrats who signed it. The ladies are correct -- this needs to change, and it needs to change now.

{If you are represented by a senator who is a woman, please contact her through her Senate contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.}





Our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week is on a related subject.

Representative Elizabeth Esty showed how not to deal with sexual (and physical) harassment within her own office. When her chief of staff was accused -- with a voice mail as evidence -- of threatening a fellow staffer's life after a romantic breakup, Esty let him stay in his job for an additional three months. Then, when she finally let him go, she wrote him a recommendation letter, paid him severance money, and signed a non-disclosure agreement where she agreed not to disclose why he had been fired. A textbook example of how not to handle such a situation, really. The Washington Post has the whole sordid story:

The threat from Rep. Elizabeth Esty's chief of staff arrived in a voice mail.

"You better f-----g reply to me or I will f-----g kill you," Tony Baker said in the May 5, 2016, recording left for Anna Kain, a former Esty aide Baker had once dated.

Kain, who provided a copy of the recording to The Washington Post, alerted the police, filed a report for felony threats and obtained a 12-month restraining order against Baker.

According to emails obtained by The Post, Esty found out about the episode within a week. At that point, the Connecticut Democrat took matters into her own hands.

Rather than firing or suspending Baker, the congresswoman consulted her personal attorneys and advisers, she said. She also spoke to Kain on May 11, emails show; Kain said she provided detailed allegations that Baker had punched, berated and sexually harassed her in Esty's Capitol Hill office throughout 2014, while she worked as Esty's senior adviser.

Later, Esty enlisted a friend, former chief of staff Julie Sweet, to look into Baker's past behavior, emails show.

Baker did not leave for three months. By his last day on Aug. 12, according to documents Esty provided to The Post, he and Esty had co-written a positive recommendation letter he could use in a job search and signed a legal document preventing her from disparaging him or discussing why he left. Baker went on to work for Sandy Hook Promise, the gun-control group created after the 2012 shooting in Esty's district. He was dismissed from the group this week after The Post contacted him.

The controversy over Esty's handling of Baker's dismissal was first reported Thursday by the Connecticut Post.

In retrospect, Esty said she dealt with the situation poorly. She said she plans to reimburse the U.S. Treasury for what she described as the roughly $5,000 Baker received in severance. She also plans to improve how she runs her office, she said.

"What I did was not good enough and it didn't protect {my staff} enough," Esty said Monday in an interview at her home in Cheshire, Conn.

This wasn't just a he-said/she-said situation. She had him on voice mail, threatening her life. She went to the cops, and she got a restraining order from a judge. Representative Esty knew about it within a week, and yet she let him stay for an additional three months, and then bent over backwards to make sure he could land another cushy job somewhere.

Elizabeth Esty aided and abetted criminal behavior. There's just no other way to characterize it. If nothing else, this provides an excellent example of why Congress needs to overhaul the way they handle such accusations. There wasn't a shadow of a doubt in this case -- the guy threatened her life on tape! There can be no extenuating circumstances for that level of harassment, really.

For completely and utterly dropping the ball on this one, Representative Elizabeth Esty is easily the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week. For shame, Congresswoman, for shame!

{Contact Representative Elizabeth Esty on her House contact page, to let her know what you think of her actions.}




Volume 478 (3/30/18)

A very mixed bag this week, including a rather extended slam on Fox News from a retired military officer who just quit the network in disgust. Plus, at the end, a fun jump on April Fool's Day (that also explains this article's own subtitle).

Oh, and because we ran out of talking points and didn't know where else to put it, check out this hilarious photo someone got of Senator Ted Cruz, at an airport. The woman didn't reveal the "Texas deserves better than Cruz!" card on her lanyard until just before the photo was taken. We have to say: well done! Nice bit of trolling, there!

OK, that's enough. Let's get on with it.



Kelly on the sideline

If true, this is going to have major consequences in the coming weeks.

"There have been recent news reports that Donald Trump is considering doing away with the position of chief of staff, and instead running the White House like he always run his businesses. It seems Trump may already be moving in this direction, as John Kelly's role in the decision-making process seems to be shrinking fast. Kelly was so far out of the loop that he called up David Shulkin on the phone Wednesday morning to tell him he wouldn't be fired by tweet that afternoon. Then he had to call Shulkin back, when Trump decided differently. Kelly also reportedly wasn't in the room when Trump decided to fire H. R. McMaster last week and replace him with John Bolton. Kelly doesn't get to listen in to Trump's phone calls with world leaders anymore, and he wasn't listening last week when Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin on the phone. It seems that day by day Trump is already beginning to act as his own chief of staff. I wonder how long it'll take Kelly to realize that he's being sidelined?"



Let the Pentagon pay, they're rich!

Trump this week tweeted out his thoughts on building his beloved border wall. At first, nobody knew what he was talking about, because he merely said that "M" should pay for it. "M"? Um... Judi Dench in the Bond films, perhaps? Trump later clarified that he meant the military should pay for his wall. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had the best reaction to this new idea, which we find we cannot improve upon:

First Mexico was supposed to pay for it, then U.S. taxpayers, and now our men and women in uniform? This would be a blatant misuse of military funds and tied up in court for years. Secretary {of Defense James} Mattis ought not bother and instead use the money to help our troops, rather than advance the president's political fantasies.

The kids are alright

High school kids staged an impressive rally in Washington last weekend, and indeed around the globe in hundreds of other cities. They seem to be doing a much better job fighting for new gun regulations than any previous effort.

"The Marjory Stoneman Douglas students are looking more impressive every day. They held a monster rally in Washington, the March For Our Lives, where they did not mince their words at all. If politicians aren't on board with sane gun regulations that are overwhelmingly supported by the public, then there's an easy answer: Vote them out! It didn't generate a lot of press, but the day after their march the oldest gunmaker in the United States, Remington, filed for bankruptcy. Support from the public -- in a Fox News poll, no less -- for universal background checks is now at 91 percent. Mental health checks for gun buyers polls at 84 percent. Raising the age to buy long guns has 72 percent support, and banning assault rifles and semiautomatic weapons even polls at 60 percent support. This is why the students' message is resonating so widely. It's gotten to the point where their opponents are reduced to personal attacks against high school students because the public is so squarely on the students' side of the debate. And, as Laura Ingraham just discovered, ad hominem attacks on teens is not exactly a good business decision, either."



It is to laugh, no?

Hypocrisy, thy name is Republicans.

"Republicans in Congress aren't generally known for their comedy-writing skills, but their new idea certainly is worthy of a Saturday Night Live sketch. After passing a massive budget-busting tax cut (to the tune of one-point-five trillion dollars), and a budget agreement that hikes the deficit to ever-higher levels, the GOP suddenly dusted off an old chestnut and decided to hold a vote on a balanced budget amendment. This is downright laughable. There is, after all, absolutely nothing stopping them from writing a balanced budget and then trying to pass it through Congress right now. Instead of doing so, they are screaming: 'Stop us before we hurt ourselves!' in a desperate move to pull the wool over the eyes of their own base voters. Anyone who believes a Republican in the House sincerely cares about a balanced budget after blowing two trillion-dollar holes in the deficit within the past few months will believe anything. Maybe they should hold the vote on April Fool's Day, because this is the height of foolishness."



Democrats pick up a second Pennsylvania district

This is good news indeed for Democrats.

"Republican Representative Ryan Costello, who represents the Philadelphia suburbs, just announced he will not be seeking re-election this November. This brings the number of retiring Republicans in Congress to almost 50, while the Democrats only have 10 members retiring. The Brookings Institution has been tracking congressional retirements since the 1930s, and they report that the GOP has never had this many retirements in a single election year. Costello decried the political environment as he explained his decision to step down, saying: 'Whether it's Stormy Daniels, or passing an omnibus spending bill that the president threatens to veto after promising to sign, it's very difficult to move forward in a constructive way today.' But because Costello made his announcement after the candidate filing deadline had closed, Republicans are left without a serious candidate on their own primary ballot. They may have to launch a write-in campaign! This seems to almost guarantee that a second Pennsylvania district will flip to the Democrats, making regaining control of the House that much easier in November."



The real witch hunt at Fox News

A military spokesman for Fox News quit recently, and he wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post to explain his decision. Retired Army officer Ralph Peters pulled no punches in explaining why he had to walk away. It's worth quoting him at length, in fact, as he clearly identifies who is guilty of generating witch hunts and fake news.

You could measure the decline of Fox News by the drop in the quality of guests waiting in the green room. A year and a half ago, you might have heard George Will discussing policy with a senator while a former Cabinet member listened in. Today, you would meet a Republican commissar with a steakhouse waistline and an eager young woman wearing too little fabric and too much makeup, immersed in memorizing her talking points.

This wasn't a case of the rats leaving a sinking ship. The best sailors were driven overboard by the rodents.

As I wrote in an internal Fox memo, leaked and widely disseminated, I declined to renew my contract as Fox News's strategic analyst because of the network's propagandizing for the Trump administration. Today's Fox prime-time lineup preaches paranoia, attacking processes and institutions vital to our republic and challenging the rule of law.

Four decades ago, as a U.S. Army second lieutenant, I took an oath to "support and defend the Constitution." In moral and ethical terms, that oath never expires. As Fox's assault on our constitutional order intensified, spearheaded by its after-dinner demagogues, I had no choice but to leave.

My error was waiting so long to walk away.

. . .

Listening to political hacks with no knowledge of things Russian tell the vast Fox audience that the special counsel's investigation was a "witch hunt," while I could not respond, became too much to bear. There is indeed a witch hunt, and it's led by Fox against Robert Mueller.

The cascade of revelations about the Russia-related crimes of Trump associates was dismissed, adamantly, as "fake news" by prime-time hosts who themselves generate fake news blithely.

Trolling for lawyers...

And finally, since April Fool's Day is indeed just around the corner, we have to end with the following brilliant job of online trolling. Under the headline "SEEKING LEAD ATTORNEY FOR DIFFICULT CLIENT (1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW)" came a job posting on a certain person's continued difficulty in hiring a decent lawyer, these days. Enjoy!

Seeking a lead attorney to represent client involved in an ongoing Federal investigation. Must be familiar with laws and procedures around discovery, executive privilege, international financing of licensed real estate, election law and the Logan Act. Working knowledge of social media, especially Twitter is a plus, as is a better than average knowledge of the adult film industry and a collection of Playboy magazines from 1985-2010. Must look the part -- Gregory Peck or Tommy Lee Jones type. Prior appearances on Fox News a huge plus.

No fatties.

Must be prepared to work with a client who is very forceful and opinionated about his defense and is his own best counsel.

Basically, your job boils down to keeping him from testifying under oath and hoping the rest comes out in the wash.

Ask about our other openings on our staff and submit your resume to be considered for potential openings in the near future. Perhaps the very near future. Like, hit refresh on your browser now. Now again.

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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