Special counsel Jack Smith’s team revealed the details of the employee’s about-face in a new filing.

A Trump employee who monitored security cameras at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate abruptly retracted his earlier grand jury testimony and implicated Trump and others in obstruction of justice just after switching from an attorney paid for by a Trump political action committee to a lawyer from the federal defender’s office in Washington, prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday.

  • thelastknowngod@lemm.ee
    60·
    1 year ago

    So the PAC was paying for his first lawyer… The whole point of the PAC system is that the candidate doesn’t control it, right? How does a PAC get held accountable for witness tampering?

    • Nicenightforawalk@kbin.social
      24·
      1 year ago

      Trump has been doing this from early on in his presidency with other lawyers and people close to him. His PAC has always been there to pay for all the legal fees and they share the same lawyers then pass on the info between each other to get their clients stories straight and locked in.

    • glockenspiel@programming.dev
      13·
      1 year ago

      Candidates actually can and do control PACs… up to a certain point. For example, the entire reason that Mike Huckabee keeps running for offices he knows he will never get past the very, very early primary stage, is because he can get his PAC funded and he can enrich himself and his family. Did you know that Mike Huckabee pays his children six figures a year for “roles” they hold in his PAC? That includes now-governor (barf) Sarah Huckabee-Sanders.

      Trump took it to the extreme, though. But it is completely normal and legal. It is why PACs were always a bullshit proposition. It is also why people hold off so long on officially declaring candidacy and actually filing the paperwork until the deadline because that starts the clock as to when they can no longer directly personally control PACs and directly profit off of them.

    • flipht@kbin.social
      3·
      1 year ago

      Unless your interests are the same.

      Another defendent? Probably never. But like a family member or friend that needs your name to not be dirt? Maybe.

    • NatakuNox@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago

      In a case involving criminal collusion, courts should require all defendants to have separate council. It’s obvious letting the most powerful member being prosecuted paying for the defense of the lessor defendants is a problem.

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
    25·
    1 year ago

    Legal question.

    The lawyer was paid by the PAC to represent the employee. Who is the lawyer’s client? The employee or the PAC? Could the lawyer be in trouble for putting the PAC’s needs ahead of the employee’s?

    • journey01@lemmy.world
      18·
      1 year ago

      The client is the employee. The lawyer’s ethical duty is to the employee even though he is being paid by someone else. Same situation when your insurance company hires a lawyer to defend you in a lawsuit.

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
        3·
        1 year ago

        Yes, I was thinking that they were cutting it pretty thin not telling the employee to cut a deal. Hopefully, this will be another case of MAGA [Make Attorneys Get Attorneys]

    • flipht@kbin.social
      92·
      1 year ago

      Ianal, but I think they have a responsibility to at least let the defendant know about their options. Other than that, they can have a strategy or suggest the defendant accept the less good options.

      Sounds like this guy realized that their “help” wasn’t in his own interest.

          • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
            218·
            1 year ago

            I’m not commenting on anal sex. I’m commenting on the stupid practice of wild speculation summed up with a bizarre acronym. That acronym should die on reddit.

            • extant@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5·
              1 year ago

              I know exactly what you’re talking about, and my point still stands that when giving advislce you need to make it clear you are not a lawyer and if you are that you are not their lawyer when giving advice that could be misconstrued as legal advice and possibly cause liability issues. Telling someone directly “I am not a lawyer” or saying it as an acronym accomplishes just that. This isn’t a practice that stems from Reddit, but the legal system itself. While using it as an acronym was popularized over the Internet it’s certainly never been exclusive to Reddit but anywhere things may be construed as legal advice are.

                • extant@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  I agree to an extent, but you can still provide valued information without being a lawyer a few examples: a subject matter expert, sharing first hand experience, contact information, or documents one might need. Sometimes those things might even be better than advice received from a lawyer.

            • jeremyparker@programming.dev
              2·
              1 year ago

              It seems like you have a problem with the wild speculation, not the acronym. Which is legit, people don’t need to have opinions on every single thing they think about, and they certainly don’t need to share them. But it kinda seems like they’re going to anyway. And, in that case, what’s better, wild speculation or wild speculation that admits it?

            • rhsJack@lemmy.world
              43·
              1 year ago

              Agreed. I think both should die on Reddit. And, please, do it privately with another consenting adult. The “talking out of your ass about stuff you shouldn’t be talking about” stuff. And the butt stuff, too. But mostly the former.

  • roguetrick@kbin.social
    23·
    1 year ago

    Lol and the Trump lawyer wants to exclude his testimony as a witness because it’s a conflict of interest since he was his former lawyer. What nonsense.