Laurence Tribe: Installing Manafort as a mole within Mueller probe was blatantly illegal.

[triron]

Link to tweet

[Merlot]

1. If it's illegal, who do you charge, manifort or the lawyers?

[tinrobot]

2. All of the above.

If they conspired to break laws, they are all culpable.

[Hortensis]

4. Lol. Yes. Everyone they choose to. And the

Mueller investigators are the A team drawn from the DoJ's A ranks. There is NO chance they wouldn't foresee this.

[Honeycombe8]

13. The American Bar Association might pull a lawyer's license, for doing illegal acts...

connected with his practicing law.

A lawyer wouldn't make such moves without giving it serious thought.

I'm wondering if this was a matter of Trump's lawyers contacting Mueller's lawyers, which is legal, and working a counter-deal to Manafort's. That doesn't mean Manafort was installed as a mole.

IF Mueller had a written agreement with Manafort & his lawyers that they wouldn't communicate with Trump or his lawyers, the lawyers would be in trouble over that (if it can be proven). But I don't know if there was such an agreement, or if that is common.

But Trump's lawyers could be in trouble for obstruction of justice, though, couldn't they?

This is so complicated and bizarre. I'm not sure what happened.

[erronis]

19. I don't have a lot of faith in self-regulating professional organizations, even the ABA

Why can't all of these "Associations" be held to a higher national standard?

Of course the ABA or the AMA (Medical), or the PHARMA, etc. don't want to have government regulation. Besides, they are the only ones with in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. Gov't regulators and congress-critters couldn't possibly understand what is best for the association members.

Back on topic - I'm not sure that many of the beagles that _might_ get censured by the ABA would find that a very high price to pay; especially when they may have millions stashed away and some possible threat of body/family harm if they don't "stay in their lane."

[Jim Lane]

22. Don't worry. The ABA plays no direct role in licensing attorneys.

In New York, which might be the applicable state here, the state is divided into four geographical departments. Each has a Departmental Disciplinary Committee, which is part of the state government. It handles admission to the bar and disciplinary actions against attorneys, up to and including disbarment.

Some states have a "unified bar" in which a lawyer must be a member of the state bar association in order to practice. That setup does involve self-regulation but not by the ABA.

The ABA plays an indirect role through law school accreditation. Most states require that an applicant for admission to the bar be a graduate of a law school that's accredited by the ABA. Obviously, though, accreditation is on a school-by-school basis. The ABA doesn't distinguish among the individuals who've graduated from an accredited school.

[LiberalFighter]

3. Any lawyers involved need to be disbarred too.

If they have any teaching jobs they need to lose those jobs too.

[Jersey Devil]

5. According to Rudi G they reported to him

Subpoena for Rudy? Wouldn't that be fun?

[Harker]

11. They'd never shut him up. n/t

[gratuitous]

6. Standard hedge language from the Times and the media generally

The arrangement was "highly unusual" and "appeared" to to give Trump ammunition in his public campaign to discredit the special prosecutor. Usual, unusual, doesn't matter; it was illegal as all hell. "Appeared" to supply the administration with dirt; no, it did supply the administration with talking points to be used to make unwarranted attacks on the credibility of the special prosecutor. And those attacks - surprise, surprise - were carried in the media straight-faced, without any hint that there was anything untoward about them.

There has been real damage inflicted on the country by this corrupt administration, and real, live, flesh-and-blood human beings are suffering and dying because of it. This isn't just screwing around with the system for fun and profit, this is real life and real death, including the deaths of sister and brother journalists. Why do the media continue to treat this as little more than an exercise in semantics?

[malaise]

7. Excellent post

It's like they don't get it or believe that this fucking kakistocracy deserves to be treated like some legitimate administration while they continue to excel in criminality and destruction of the rule of law.

[triron]

9. Yes a criminal enterprise masquerading as the executive branch.

[Prendy]

8. Explanation of the illegality?

I would like nothing more than to see Manafort go down for these communications. As well, I would love to see Mueller obtain access to all of the communications between Manafort’s lawyers and Trump’s team. But, I have yet to see a cogent explanation as to why the communications are illegal or why Mueller can break the protections of the joint defense agreement between Manafort and Trump. Tribe supplies only conclusions about illegality and obstruction, no analysis. Whatever our perceptions are of Mueller’s investigation, it is my understanding that he has never identified Trump as a target of that investigation. I suspect that Giuliani and his team will argue that as Trump is not a “target“ of the investigation, there is no misalignment of interests between Trump and Manafort, and the joint defense agreement is perfectly appropriate.

[triron]

10. Why don't you ask Professor Tribe?

He wouldn't say anything like this without rigorous academic understanding.

[BumRushDaShow]

15. The fact that Manafort's ass had been physically sitting in jail

before his trial rather than being out on bail under home confinement was for the exact type of thing - considered "witness tampering". I.e., he was communicating with others under investigation.

Paul Manafort ordered to jail after witness-tampering charges


By Spencer S. Hsu, Ellen Nakashima and Devlin Barrett
June 15

The order to incarcerate Manafort capped a months-long fight over the terms of his bail. He had been confined to his home on electronic monitoring and other restrictions since he was first indicted Oct. 27 during special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Manafort had been asking to post a $10 million bond and end the seven months of home detention.

<...>

Prosecutors had previously complained to the judge about Manafort’s behavior as he awaited trial. In December, they accused him of violating a court’s gag order by helping ghostwrite an op-ed piece defending his work in Ukraine for an English-language newspaper in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. Jackson, the judge, declined to punish Manafort then but warned she would probably consider similar actions in the future as a violation.

In asking for Manafort to be jailed, prosecutor Greg Andres said in court that there was a danger Manafort would continue to commit crimes. Andres summarized what he called “a sustained campaign over a five-week period” by Manafort to reach the two witnesses and influence their testimony.

In addition to the texts and phone calls cited in the government’s earlier filing, Andres said one of the witnesses had provided an affidavit through his lawyer about one call from Manafort that was completed. “We learned about it because a witness in this case brought forward information about the tampering. That’s when we started investigating,” Andres said, adding: “There is no way to monitor Mr. Manafort’s communications. At the least, he has shown he is adept” at making them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/manafort-ordered-to-jail-after-witness-tampering-charges/2018/06/15/ccc526cc-6e68-11e8-afd5-778aca903bbe_story.htm

And Mueller doesn't have to publicly "identify" anyone who is a "target". Heck... people have been posting copies of court docs with all kinds of "sealed indictments" coming out of his probe that none of us know who these refer to.

[paleotn]

18. Do you seriously think a specific "target" needs to be identified in a criminal investigation?

Seriously? You're kidding, right?

"While investigating the disappearance of several children, we found evidence that this individual was murdering them and eating them for breakfast. But damn it! Since they weren't the specific "target" of our investigation, we'll just have to forget everything we've uncovered."

[Honeycombe8]

12. Do they have proof he was installed as a mole? Or did Trump just offer him a counter deal...

and Manafort took it?

So what they did was slow down the investigation by wasting Mueller's time, log enough to get Whitaker installed as Acting AG, to effectively kill the investigation.

Very savvy. And evil. Not something someone who obeys the law would do.

That's a big game changer for Mueller. Even some Democrats are calling for the Mueller investigation to end. People tiring of it, coupled with the clamps that Whitaker will put on it, well...that's not good.

Whatever they thought they had from Manafort is now up in smoke. Unless they have some backup documentation to prove it, and Manafort was just supposedly filling in the blanks and adding firsthand testimony to it.

[BumRushDaShow]

17. I would expect any "counter deal" would have voided the cooperation agreement

which is why Mueller is moving forward to having Manafort sentenced, with his plea deal is null and void.

The ball is in Drumpf's court if he wants to go ahead and do a pre-emptive "pardon" and/or "commutation" of the sentence and face any fallout from that. Plus remember there are things that were farmed out to SDNY and the NY AG has state investigations ongoing that can't be "pardoned" and I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't any involving Manafort.

[Merlot]

20. Who is tiring of the investigation except for republicans and trumpft?

No one stops an investigation, the investigation goes on until it has the conclusion. And we don't just give up on it due to whitikers interference, in fact, that interference is another form of obstruction of justice. They are just burying themselves deeper and deeper.

[kentuck]

14. I think it is time to indict Donald Trump.

But, I suppose Matt Whitaker is not taking indictments at this time?

[paleotn]

16. Yep. And they did just what the Mueller team thought they might do....

Turns out the mole was probably a reverse mole, but didn't know he was until he blew up shitler, his idiotic legal team...and himself. Mueller and company are very, very seasoned prosecutors. They've all been around the block so many times they've cut ruts in the road. Also, a defendant reneging on a plea deal isn't anything new and in some circumstances can be useful. In this case, I think Manafort implicates shitler in even more wrong doing. He's going to jail for a long, long time as he's already convicted of serious federal crimes AND can also be prosecuted on the state level. His legal team, bless their hearts, better look into real estate law or writing wills since they will never, ever be able to adequately defend anyone ever again in a federal criminal case. No prosecutor anywhere will ever trust them. In short, the bad guys fucked themselves royally and the good guys figured someone would pull this shit.

[Takket]

21. not a lawyer.........

did the deal manafort made specifically forbid him form talking to drumpf or his lawyers?

surly it isn't illegal for lawyers representing clients being investigated for the same crimes to communicate with each other?