Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty

[StassneyHorn 6625]

I really hate some of you. This is a screenshot of his actual page from 30 s ago

 

 

[Born to Run 6569]

Is the food in prisons all-you-can-eat?  Cuz we have to pay for that.

Counter point: she would be in an all you Must eat scenario in a poorly funded unairconditioned prison full of the angry ladys of gen pop.

[gernblansten 3197]

4 hours ago, aggie08 said:

Let’s keep the outcomes in the realm of possibility. 

[jimmyjazz 46086]

Any legitimate Trump tweets to post?  This is like my first girlfriend, over and over again.

[Born to Run 6569]

Any legitimate Trump tweets to post?  This is like my first girlfriend, over and over again.

"Covfefe"

[Gap03 3310]

29 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Any legitimate Trump tweets to post?  This is like my first girlfriend, over and over again.

The post that Stassney posted was real. Pretty sure someone has taken over his account or at least ghosted that post - no way he knows what salacious means.

[SydneyCarton 48149]

5 hours ago, StassneyHorn said:

I really hate some of you. This is a screenshot of his actual page from 30 s ago

 

 

You hate us for refusing to go to truth social to confirm something on Trump’s account? But we went to truth social yourself and looked at trump’s account? 

1) Thanks for doing the dirty work here, sir. 
2) You went to Truth So Social. I posit that you hate yourself. 

[Lurch 5931]

Banhanmer for fake screenshots in this thread imo

[Captainant 27725]

1 minute ago, Lurch said:

Banhanmer for fake screenshots in this thread imo

For real. We gotta stop mis/disinformation on #bothsides. It only muddies the water further and helps trump's end goal of being above consequences. If there's no clarity what awful things he's said, then everyone's version of GRUhorn and anastasia will find a reason to give him the benefit of the doubt

[Lurch 5931]

Or at least be funny? What was even the point?

[Francisco 2.0 32414]

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html

 

Quote

One of the latest setbacks in Donald Trump’s many legal cases came from within his own team when attorney Tim Parlatore left the group and publicly blamed Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn for his departure. The problems within the group are deeper and more complex than Epshteyn, however, according to conversations I have had in recent days with some of the lawyers currently defending Trump in some of his most significant and perilous legal entanglements. They agreed to talk to me on the condition of anonymity and were careful not to violate attorney-client privilege by speaking about the specifics of any case, but it was clear from our conversations that there are serious problems with the effort to defend the former president.

 

 

Quote

“It’s not quite as dysfunctional as the media portrays it,” one of Trump’s lawyers told me about the group, but “to the extent it is dysfunctional, it does negatively affect things.” Another lawyer told me the media’s depictionof Trump’s legal team as disorganized and riven by interpersonal conflict is “fair but slightly overstated.”

 

Quote

On Monday, several Trump lawyers were spotted meeting with Justice Department officials, including special counsel Jack Smith, in an apparent bid to talk them out of bringing criminal charges against Trump in connection with his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and the subsequent efforts to stonewall federal investigators. Some of Trump’s lawyers told me they have already resigned themselves to what they see as the inevitable prospect of a federal indictment concerning at least the documents, even as they maintain that such charges would be legally unwarranted.

 

Spoiler

These sorts of meetings are very familiar to federal prosecutors who have conducted complex white-collar criminal investigations (and, yes, as many have noted already, they tend to take place near the end of the investigation). In my past life, I was in the prosecutor’s seat for a couple of those discussions with the same lawyer leading the group on behalf of Trump on Monday, a former federal prosecutor turned defense lawyer named Jim Trusty. He fits a recognizable type in the white-collar bar — affable, plainspoken, and experienced in a broad array of criminal investigations — but he is also something of an oddity. He works at a relatively small and little-known Washington law firm whose principal focus, at least until recently, was online gambling and internet fraud.

Trump’s legal team is fractured across various jurisdictions and investigations, from New York to Washington to Florida to Georgia, and there is virtually no coordination among the attorneys. There is also no credible or unifying figure at the helm, which will increasingly complicate matters for Trump — particularly as decisions from prosecutors at the Justice Department and in Georgia are reportedly looming on the horizon, as Trump faces a major civil-enforcement action from the New York attorney general that will go to trial in October, and as the criminal caseagainst Trump in Manhattan heads toward a trial currently scheduled for March.

The group itself is an odd bunch. As with Trusty, some were known quantities in their respective areas of practice well before their work for Trump — people like Ron Fischetti, who has reportedly been working most recently on the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against Trumpand his company; Chris Kise, a former solicitor general of Florida who worked on the effort to halt the Justice Department’s review of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago; Joe Tacopina, the New York lawyer who was initially engaged to defend Trump in the civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll and is now defending him in the Manhattan DA’s prosecution over the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels; and Todd Blanche, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who successfully represented Paul Manafort in New York and left a large law firm to defend Trump alongside Tacopina in Manhattan criminal court.

Other lawyers have had more eclectic qualifications and taken unusual paths to represent Trump. Parlatore, who once served in the Navy but has not previously worked at the Justice Department, rose to national prominencedefending former Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, whom Trump later effectively pardoned. Still others appear to have virtually no relevant experience, such as Christina Bobb, a lawyer and former host for the right-wing One America News Network who found herself working for Trump last year before she reportedly got herself ensnared in the criminal investigation at Mar-a-Lago.  

One of the lawyers currently working on Trump’s sprawling legal-defense team drew a sharper, more provocative distinction. “You’re either one of two people as a lawyer for Donald Trump,” the attorney told me. “The ones who say ‘yes’ to everything, who will get sanctioned and get disbarred, who go to courts claiming election fraud that doesn’t exist, or who get put in a difficult position” owing to their service to Trump. “He gets these lawyers who just want to be part of that Trump world.” Others, in this person’s view, are more experienced, professionally secure, and independent minded and do their best to represent Trump within the boundaries of professional rules and norms.

Ordinarily, a person of significant financial means facing several serious government investigations would try to select a single national law firm to manage the effort, perhaps in partnership with reputable local counsel in the relevant jurisdictions. There are certainly variations on that scenario, including an array of midsize or prominent boutique firms that can field highly capable and experienced defense teams, but ideally, the team of lawyers is strategically, tactically, and even temperamentally aligned. A smaller number of firms also improves coordination and information sharing among the team and reduces competition and infighting among lawyers, particularly since financial incentives are more closely aligned when lawyers work at the same firm.

Whatever the precise structure, ideally the group members are in frequent communication with one another so they are aware of what may be happening in other jurisdictions; so they can review and coordinate legal filings to eliminate any potential inconsistencies across factual claims, legal positions, and even tonality; and so they can share government requests or subpoenas and ensure the responses are comprehensive and uniform, including with respect to the assertion of legal privileges that could inadvertently be waived. That is particularly the case when you have a prosecutor working on multiple major fronts, as Smith is, or when you have multiple prosecutors looking at the same fact pattern, as with the overlapping investigations concerning Trump’s effort to remain in power after the 2020 election that are being run separately by Smith and down in Georgia by Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis.

Multiple lawyers working for Trump, however, told me there is no meaningful coordination across the groups. There are no standing meetings or calls — a common feature of large defense teams handling complex matters on behalf of a single client — to provide updates or compare notes among the groups. Even today, some of the lawyers working on Trump’s most important matters have never met or even spoken to one another, and they have little insight into what’s happening in the proceedings they aren’t directly working on. “You do what you do, then we all convene later and find out later what everyone else has done,” as one of them put it.

Adding to the chaos have been frequent staffing changes and the conspicuous shuffling of lawyers in and out of teams, which is inherently disruptive and at times has generated some understandable friction among the lawyers involved. Parlatore’s recent departure was just the latest example; his public comments about the internal workings of the team (the disclosure about Epshteyn objecting to additional searches for documents, in particular) have rankled some of the remaining lawyers. In addition, according to public reports, Kise has ended up in a less prominent position than initially anticipated; he was expected to maintain a leading role in the documents investigation. (He reportedly did not attend Monday’s meeting at the Justice Department.) There were also relatively last-minute staffing changes on the team defending E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit (Tacopina was added to a team that was until then being led by Alina Habba) as well as the team defending Trump in the Manhattan DA’s investigation (with the relatively late addition of Tacopina and, later still, Blanche).

Some of the lawyers I spoke with acknowledged how strange it is that an ostensibly wealthy former U.S. president finds himself with such a professionally and geographically fractured group, but they cited a variety of explanations, all having to do with Trump himself. One reason, they said, is that Trump is cheap and has apparently been reluctant to spend the sort of money his legal circumstances would seem to demand. Another is that he seems to have a high tolerance for chaos and dysfunction and perhaps even enjoys being able to shuffle lawyers around based on his whims, however unwise it may ultimately be.

There is also a very serious question about the number of sizable, reputable law firms that would even take Trump on as a client at this point, particularly since most of them are based in Manhattan (where Trump is widely loathed); since so many lawyers have gotten into major troubleworking for Trump; and since the media have cast a harsh light on large firms like Jones Day, whose legal work was integral to Trump’s first campaign and administration.

Fundamentally, this would seem to be a Trump problem, a function of his long, rich history of erratic and unfocused management, which has been documented in both his business and presidential roles. But after Parlatore left the team, he pointed a sharp finger in the direction of Epshteyn, who serves in a role that loosely approximates an in-house counsel or personal lawyer for Trump in addition to his campaign responsibilities. According to Parlatore, Epshteyn impeded efforts by Trump’s lawyers to conduct searches for more classified documents after the search of Mar-a-Lago and was “not very honest with us or the client” — a seemingly damning assessment of someone whose job supposedly includes managing the flow of information between Trump and his various lawyers.

As with all things Trump, however, you will get a slightly different perspective on the matter depending on whom you speak with in the former president’s orbit. One lawyer currently working for Trump insisted that Boris Epshteyn “doesn’t manage me” before proceeding to criticize his lack of “experience as a litigator.” This person explained, “He’s not really an attorney,” adding, “If you ask me what I think about Boris, I share the same sentiments [as Parlatore]. I think, frankly, all the lawyers do.”
Another lawyer told me, “Boris is exactly who you think he is. He’s a yes-man. He’s an enabler. He thinks suing people is the answer to everything.” In particular, this person cited the civil complaint filed on behalf of Trump against Hillary Clinton, which was tossed out, and a pending lawsuit against Michael Cohen, both of which drew some skepticism among Trump lawyers who weren’t directly involved in preparing the complaints.

I asked the same person whether Epshteyn’s performance was emblematic of broader disorganization across the defense teams and whether that was ultimately hurting Trump himself. The answer was quick and unequivocal: “Yes. Without a question.”

Yet another lawyer took sharp issue with Parlatore’s diagnosis of the situation and insisted Epshteyn was not standing in their way. “Every single one of Trump’s lawyers has his cell-phone number, and he will pick up on the first ring,” this person told me. “If he doesn’t pick up, it’s because he’s giving a speech. He’ll pick up even when he’s golfing. The idea that there’s this buffer is an insane lie.”

That lawyer went on to explain that the atomized, decentralized nature of Trump’s legal defense remains a significant problem apart from Epshteyn. “Substantively, it matters because you have one individual who is facing three separate criminal investigations, or really four if you say January 6 is its own, and who is actively running for president,” the attorney said. “It is a major machine. He has a staff of campaign folks putting out a message that necessarily has to include these investigations, so not having a central brain trust that knows intimately what’s happening in all four investigations and then can communicate that to Trump and among the lawyers and to the campaign staff, it creates dysfunction. It just does. There’s no way it doesn’t.”

Those observations point to a central paradox of Trump’s current legal situation, particularly as it relates to the pending criminal investigations and the prosecution in Manhattan. His reelection campaign appears to be a central component of his legal-defense strategy, since, if successful, a second term as president would allow him to shut down any pending federal prosecutions and investigations and would provide him with a potent justification for putting any state proceedings on ice. But as an electoral matter, Trump thrives on conflict and grievance. On the campaign trail, he has repeatedly posited an elaborate theory of political persecution at the hands of prosecutors, and by all outward appearances, Trump seems to be quite comfortable being publicly locked in an intensely adversarial dynamic with the Justice Department.

A productive legal defense in complex matters, however, tends to involve some level of humility, compromise, and conciliation — traits that are fundamentally incompatible with Trump’s public and political personae and ones he seems incapable of modeling even briefly. Early last year, for instance, Trump could have easily cut short the criminal investigation concerning the documents at Mar-a-Lago if he had simply returned everything and made some slight display of contrition. There might very well have been an opportunity even after the search of Mar-a-Lago to resolve the investigation along similar lines, but Trump resorted to attack mode and has publicly been stuck there ever since.

This could all conceivably work out in Trump’s favor in the long run if he manages to get reelected, but in the short term, the dynamics are problematic for him whether he realizes it or not. At the moment, he lacks the sort of disciplined, unified, credible, and coordinated legal-defense team he would need to maximally serve his interests, and the current situation will only get worse if more cases pile up, leading to more court appearances, more diversions from the campaign trail, and more high-stakes legal battles that could pose both personal and political risks.

Meanwhile, the knock on Smith and a number of the prosecutors workingunder his supervision — including former colleagues with whom I have spoken in the months since his appointment — is that, if anything, they may be temperamentally inclined to charge too many people and too many crimes. In private, some former federal prosecutors who have worked with Smith and his colleagues have expressed mild concern (they all mostly hate Trump, so no one is terribly worried) about the possibility that Smith could end up bringing a high-profile prosecution that fails (again) or gets reversed on appeal (again). Whatever one makes of that critique, the intensely adversarial posture Trump has adopted cannot possibly be helping him in strictly legal terms as he and his lawyers navigate the crucial months ahead across from Smith and his team.

At this point, the situation may very well be beyond repair, but there is only one person who could ever conceivably fix this. It is not Epshteyn but the client himself, a man who has practically dedicated his life to high-level chaos and dysfunction in all of his pursuits. When he was in office, this was a national problem with serious national implications, but this time around, Trump’s political opponents will be watching and rooting for him to stay the course.

 

[RomaVicta 29967]

I've got email feeds from the Washington Post and NYT. I saw the stories of pending indictment got excited then looked for news from those sources. They're more discreet in what they print and only reported the letter informing Trump he's a target and how this could mean indictments are closer.

I try to keep it balanced. Fair and balanced like FOX News. We report. You ignite.

[StassneyHorn 6625]

4 hours ago, SydneyCarton said:

You hate us for refusing to go to truth social to confirm something on Trump’s account? But we went to truth social yourself and looked at trump’s account? 

1) Thanks for doing the dirty work here, sir. 
2) You went to Truth So Social. I posit that you hate yourself. 

Try this again in English.

2 hours ago, Lurch said:

Banhanmer for fake screenshots in this thread imo

 

[SydneyCarton 48149]

12 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

Try this again in English.

 

"Anyone who willingly goes to Truth Social has to hate themselves. But thanks for posting the screenshot so no one else had to do it."

[Celery Man 20994]

12 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Two months ago.  Geezus twitter sucks.

it is so incredibly fucking stupid to have gotten rid of verification. Ok TomThunkitsMind is saying a thing, I don't know who the fuck that is and the little blue check means absolutely nothing at all, and even if it was a tweet from verified user AndersonCooperCNN or whoever the fuck that could still really be anyone. it's just like overhearing shit at a bar.

[StassneyHorn 6625]

24 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

"Anyone who willingly goes to Truth Social has to hate themselves. But thanks for posting the screenshot so no one else had to do it."

You’re so close

[AnTiM 1669]

Remember, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king".

[SimonBolivar 10958]

Hey, Pat Robertson died. Today is going to be a good day.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13587]

 

[Bozo_Casanova 26522]

15 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

That dude is as hysterical as a broad at the Battle Creek Sanitarium circa 1890.

 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20471]

12 hours ago, Cairn Horn88 said:

Sing, my Angel of Music
Sing, my Angel
Sing for me
Sing, my Angel!
Sing for me!

Holy shit. Just catching up on the Meadows news.  My seat back and tray table are locked and in their upright position! 

[TwiceHorn 31528]

1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

 

Exactly.  Because I found myself using yet another misogynistic term, had to place some semi-humorous context on it.

['stache 21836]

How exactly do you know if an all caps rant full of nonsense from the orange maniac is real or fake?

[Gil Bang 25997]

 

[kevwun 15853]

Seems like a fellow like that cooperating with the government would be real bad for Trump.

[atomheartbevo 89777]

[RomaVicta 29967]

51 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

 

It's been awhile since I've written this, but the GOP acts as criminal organization in all matters. Maintain power. Stay out of jail. All other priorities rescinded. Republic expendable.

Imagine the vast criminal activity found in those documents for someone to risk violating national security laws. I think Trump stole documents to sell and make himself feel important. I'm guessing that Meadows, a party man all the way, is trying to save himself and his GOP associates.

I didn't know just how despicable Meadows is until I looked on wikipedia. Voted against hurricane relief for blue states, key in shutting down the government, and founder of the Freedom Caucus. What a fucking snake pit Trump turned the White into.

It's all old news, but it still smacks me in the face from time to time. 

[Biff Tannen 45710]

38 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

It's been awhile since I've written this, but the GOP acts as criminal organization in all matters. Maintain power. Stay out of jail. All other priorities rescinded. Republic expendable.

Imagine the vast criminal activity found in those documents for someone to risk violating national security laws. I think Trump stole documents to sell and make himself feel important. I'm guessing that Meadows, a party man all the way, is trying to save himself and his GOP associates.

I didn't know just how despicable Meadows is until I looked on wikipedia. Voted against hurricane relief for blue states, key in shutting down the government, and founder of the Freedom Caucus. What a fucking snake pit Trump turned the White into.

It's all old news, but it still smacks me in the face from time to time. 

Oh yes, Meadows is an evil fuck. He was very adept at staying out of the limelight, considering his position. 

[Hermanator 7131]

2 hours ago, Gil Bang said:

 

Traitor

[jimmyjazz 46086]

I am staunchly against the death penalty.

I would laugh my ass off if one or more of these fucks got the needle.  I don't really care who, the repercussions of terror throughout the network would be lovely to imagine.

Yes, this is a hypocritial stance.  Not my first.

[Js1 85517]

5 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

I am staunchly against the death penalty.

I would laugh my ass off if one or more of these fucks got the needle.  I don't really care who, the repercussions of terror throughout the network would be lovely to imagine.

Yes, this is a hypocritial stance.  Not my first.

These fuckers deserved to be hanged on live TV

[WhatTheBuck 28797]

4 hours ago, 'stache said:

How exactly do you know if an all caps rant full of nonsense from the orange maniac is real or fake?

Just ignore all of it.

[Biff Tannen 45710]

1 hour ago, Hermanator said:

Traitor

[TwiceHorn 31528]

51 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

I am staunchly against the death penalty.

I would laugh my ass off if one or more of these fucks got the needle.  I don't really care who, the repercussions of terror throughout the network would be lovely to imagine.

Yes, this is a hypocritial stance.  Not my first.

Yeah, I am at least procedurally, if not substantively, biased in favor of criminal defendants over the gubmint.  And that is why, to a large extent, I am always ready to explain why the law seemingly favors Trump or whatever ______________ trumpworld figure you want to name.

A Trump prosecution, along with several other apparently deserving prosecutions (e.g. Elizabeth Holmes), provoke quite a bit of cognitive dissonance.

[nbmishoid 962]

9 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html

 

 

 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

These sorts of meetings are very familiar to federal prosecutors who have conducted complex white-collar criminal investigations (and, yes, as many have noted already, they tend to take place near the end of the investigation). In my past life, I was in the prosecutor’s seat for a couple of those discussions with the same lawyer leading the group on behalf of Trump on Monday, a former federal prosecutor turned defense lawyer named Jim Trusty. He fits a recognizable type in the white-collar bar — affable, plainspoken, and experienced in a broad array of criminal investigations — but he is also something of an oddity. He works at a relatively small and little-known Washington law firm whose principal focus, at least until recently, was online gambling and internet fraud.

Trump’s legal team is fractured across various jurisdictions and investigations, from New York to Washington to Florida to Georgia, and there is virtually no coordination among the attorneys. There is also no credible or unifying figure at the helm, which will increasingly complicate matters for Trump — particularly as decisions from prosecutors at the Justice Department and in Georgia are reportedly looming on the horizon, as Trump faces a major civil-enforcement action from the New York attorney general that will go to trial in October, and as the criminal caseagainst Trump in Manhattan heads toward a trial currently scheduled for March.

The group itself is an odd bunch. As with Trusty, some were known quantities in their respective areas of practice well before their work for Trump — people like Ron Fischetti, who has reportedly been working most recently on the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against Trumpand his company; Chris Kise, a former solicitor general of Florida who worked on the effort to halt the Justice Department’s review of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago; Joe Tacopina, the New York lawyer who was initially engaged to defend Trump in the civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll and is now defending him in the Manhattan DA’s prosecution over the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels; and Todd Blanche, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who successfully represented Paul Manafort in New York and left a large law firm to defend Trump alongside Tacopina in Manhattan criminal court.

Other lawyers have had more eclectic qualifications and taken unusual paths to represent Trump. Parlatore, who once served in the Navy but has not previously worked at the Justice Department, rose to national prominencedefending former Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, whom Trump later effectively pardoned. Still others appear to have virtually no relevant experience, such as Christina Bobb, a lawyer and former host for the right-wing One America News Network who found herself working for Trump last year before she reportedly got herself ensnared in the criminal investigation at Mar-a-Lago.  

One of the lawyers currently working on Trump’s sprawling legal-defense team drew a sharper, more provocative distinction. “You’re either one of two people as a lawyer for Donald Trump,” the attorney told me. “The ones who say ‘yes’ to everything, who will get sanctioned and get disbarred, who go to courts claiming election fraud that doesn’t exist, or who get put in a difficult position” owing to their service to Trump. “He gets these lawyers who just want to be part of that Trump world.” Others, in this person’s view, are more experienced, professionally secure, and independent minded and do their best to represent Trump within the boundaries of professional rules and norms.

Ordinarily, a person of significant financial means facing several serious government investigations would try to select a single national law firm to manage the effort, perhaps in partnership with reputable local counsel in the relevant jurisdictions. There are certainly variations on that scenario, including an array of midsize or prominent boutique firms that can field highly capable and experienced defense teams, but ideally, the team of lawyers is strategically, tactically, and even temperamentally aligned. A smaller number of firms also improves coordination and information sharing among the team and reduces competition and infighting among lawyers, particularly since financial incentives are more closely aligned when lawyers work at the same firm.

Whatever the precise structure, ideally the group members are in frequent communication with one another so they are aware of what may be happening in other jurisdictions; so they can review and coordinate legal filings to eliminate any potential inconsistencies across factual claims, legal positions, and even tonality; and so they can share government requests or subpoenas and ensure the responses are comprehensive and uniform, including with respect to the assertion of legal privileges that could inadvertently be waived. That is particularly the case when you have a prosecutor working on multiple major fronts, as Smith is, or when you have multiple prosecutors looking at the same fact pattern, as with the overlapping investigations concerning Trump’s effort to remain in power after the 2020 election that are being run separately by Smith and down in Georgia by Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis.

Multiple lawyers working for Trump, however, told me there is no meaningful coordination across the groups. There are no standing meetings or calls — a common feature of large defense teams handling complex matters on behalf of a single client — to provide updates or compare notes among the groups. Even today, some of the lawyers working on Trump’s most important matters have never met or even spoken to one another, and they have little insight into what’s happening in the proceedings they aren’t directly working on. “You do what you do, then we all convene later and find out later what everyone else has done,” as one of them put it.

Adding to the chaos have been frequent staffing changes and the conspicuous shuffling of lawyers in and out of teams, which is inherently disruptive and at times has generated some understandable friction among the lawyers involved. Parlatore’s recent departure was just the latest example; his public comments about the internal workings of the team (the disclosure about Epshteyn objecting to additional searches for documents, in particular) have rankled some of the remaining lawyers. In addition, according to public reports, Kise has ended up in a less prominent position than initially anticipated; he was expected to maintain a leading role in the documents investigation. (He reportedly did not attend Monday’s meeting at the Justice Department.) There were also relatively last-minute staffing changes on the team defending E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit (Tacopina was added to a team that was until then being led by Alina Habba) as well as the team defending Trump in the Manhattan DA’s investigation (with the relatively late addition of Tacopina and, later still, Blanche).

Some of the lawyers I spoke with acknowledged how strange it is that an ostensibly wealthy former U.S. president finds himself with such a professionally and geographically fractured group, but they cited a variety of explanations, all having to do with Trump himself. One reason, they said, is that Trump is cheap and has apparently been reluctant to spend the sort of money his legal circumstances would seem to demand. Another is that he seems to have a high tolerance for chaos and dysfunction and perhaps even enjoys being able to shuffle lawyers around based on his whims, however unwise it may ultimately be.

There is also a very serious question about the number of sizable, reputable law firms that would even take Trump on as a client at this point, particularly since most of them are based in Manhattan (where Trump is widely loathed); since so many lawyers have gotten into major troubleworking for Trump; and since the media have cast a harsh light on large firms like Jones Day, whose legal work was integral to Trump’s first campaign and administration.

Fundamentally, this would seem to be a Trump problem, a function of his long, rich history of erratic and unfocused management, which has been documented in both his business and presidential roles. But after Parlatore left the team, he pointed a sharp finger in the direction of Epshteyn, who serves in a role that loosely approximates an in-house counsel or personal lawyer for Trump in addition to his campaign responsibilities. According to Parlatore, Epshteyn impeded efforts by Trump’s lawyers to conduct searches for more classified documents after the search of Mar-a-Lago and was “not very honest with us or the client” — a seemingly damning assessment of someone whose job supposedly includes managing the flow of information between Trump and his various lawyers.

As with all things Trump, however, you will get a slightly different perspective on the matter depending on whom you speak with in the former president’s orbit. One lawyer currently working for Trump insisted that Boris Epshteyn “doesn’t manage me” before proceeding to criticize his lack of “experience as a litigator.” This person explained, “He’s not really an attorney,” adding, “If you ask me what I think about Boris, I share the same sentiments [as Parlatore]. I think, frankly, all the lawyers do.”
Another lawyer told me, “Boris is exactly who you think he is. He’s a yes-man. He’s an enabler. He thinks suing people is the answer to everything.” In particular, this person cited the civil complaint filed on behalf of Trump against Hillary Clinton, which was tossed out, and a pending lawsuit against Michael Cohen, both of which drew some skepticism among Trump lawyers who weren’t directly involved in preparing the complaints.

I asked the same person whether Epshteyn’s performance was emblematic of broader disorganization across the defense teams and whether that was ultimately hurting Trump himself. The answer was quick and unequivocal: “Yes. Without a question.”

Yet another lawyer took sharp issue with Parlatore’s diagnosis of the situation and insisted Epshteyn was not standing in their way. “Every single one of Trump’s lawyers has his cell-phone number, and he will pick up on the first ring,” this person told me. “If he doesn’t pick up, it’s because he’s giving a speech. He’ll pick up even when he’s golfing. The idea that there’s this buffer is an insane lie.”

That lawyer went on to explain that the atomized, decentralized nature of Trump’s legal defense remains a significant problem apart from Epshteyn. “Substantively, it matters because you have one individual who is facing three separate criminal investigations, or really four if you say January 6 is its own, and who is actively running for president,” the attorney said. “It is a major machine. He has a staff of campaign folks putting out a message that necessarily has to include these investigations, so not having a central brain trust that knows intimately what’s happening in all four investigations and then can communicate that to Trump and among the lawyers and to the campaign staff, it creates dysfunction. It just does. There’s no way it doesn’t.”

Those observations point to a central paradox of Trump’s current legal situation, particularly as it relates to the pending criminal investigations and the prosecution in Manhattan. His reelection campaign appears to be a central component of his legal-defense strategy, since, if successful, a second term as president would allow him to shut down any pending federal prosecutions and investigations and would provide him with a potent justification for putting any state proceedings on ice. But as an electoral matter, Trump thrives on conflict and grievance. On the campaign trail, he has repeatedly posited an elaborate theory of political persecution at the hands of prosecutors, and by all outward appearances, Trump seems to be quite comfortable being publicly locked in an intensely adversarial dynamic with the Justice Department.

A productive legal defense in complex matters, however, tends to involve some level of humility, compromise, and conciliation — traits that are fundamentally incompatible with Trump’s public and political personae and ones he seems incapable of modeling even briefly. Early last year, for instance, Trump could have easily cut short the criminal investigation concerning the documents at Mar-a-Lago if he had simply returned everything and made some slight display of contrition. There might very well have been an opportunity even after the search of Mar-a-Lago to resolve the investigation along similar lines, but Trump resorted to attack mode and has publicly been stuck there ever since.

This could all conceivably work out in Trump’s favor in the long run if he manages to get reelected, but in the short term, the dynamics are problematic for him whether he realizes it or not. At the moment, he lacks the sort of disciplined, unified, credible, and coordinated legal-defense team he would need to maximally serve his interests, and the current situation will only get worse if more cases pile up, leading to more court appearances, more diversions from the campaign trail, and more high-stakes legal battles that could pose both personal and political risks.

Meanwhile, the knock on Smith and a number of the prosecutors workingunder his supervision — including former colleagues with whom I have spoken in the months since his appointment — is that, if anything, they may be temperamentally inclined to charge too many people and too many crimes. In private, some former federal prosecutors who have worked with Smith and his colleagues have expressed mild concern (they all mostly hate Trump, so no one is terribly worried) about the possibility that Smith could end up bringing a high-profile prosecution that fails (again) or gets reversed on appeal (again). Whatever one makes of that critique, the intensely adversarial posture Trump has adopted cannot possibly be helping him in strictly legal terms as he and his lawyers navigate the crucial months ahead across from Smith and his team.

At this point, the situation may very well be beyond repair, but there is only one person who could ever conceivably fix this. It is not Epshteyn but the client himself, a man who has practically dedicated his life to high-level chaos and dysfunction in all of his pursuits. When he was in office, this was a national problem with serious national implications, but this time around, Trump’s political opponents will be watching and rooting for him to stay the course.

 

For you, maybe.   For others it’s more like the definition of a straight line.  No dissonance, that is.  
I applaud your procedural bias as stated.  

[TwiceHorn 31528]

Also, I'm seeing an emerging consensus that the Florida grand jury was empaneled and is being used mainly because a Trump indictment in the documents case is expected to issue from a Florida grand jury, in a Florida federal court, to eliminate venue concerns.  Which then creates more jury panel concerns.

[RomaVicta 29967]

1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

I am staunchly against the death penalty.

I would laugh my ass off if one or more of these fucks got the needle.  I don't really care who, the repercussions of terror throughout the network would be lovely to imagine.

Yes, this is a hypocritial stance.  Not my first.

These are the days where we find ourselves to be. I'm against the death penalty because they get the wrong guy too often and it is applied unfairly. I don't have a moral problem with execution if you could be absolutely sure the monster you're killing is indeed the monster he was indicted for being.

Now, I find myself pondering the utility of summary execution for insurrectionists and other traitors captured in the act.

These days, man.

[Pato del Muerto 52560]

2 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

These are the days where we find ourselves to be. I'm against the death penalty because they get the wrong guy too often and it is applied unfairly. I don't have a moral problem with execution if you could be absolutely sure the monster you're killing is indeed the monster he was indicted for being.

Now, I find myself pondering the utility of summary execution for insurrectionists and other traitors captured in the act.

These days, man.

Girl, same. 

[bluto 4941]

7  counts on classified docs 

[Bama Chick 28596]

[Cairn Horn88 8280]

That’s a shame.

[Leeroy Jenkins 2409]

We got him?

[aggie08 21523]

Joe Biden’s carefree garage door habits is what we’re going with. Kudos to anyone with that on their Bingo card. 

[Underdog 28766]

Please, let the dominoes fall upon the Trumpanzee Party, sing like a canary you orange fuck. 

[G650 14273]

It's happening.gif

[Gatorubet 30286]

Thread title finally accurate? 

[Ghost of LL 15539]

What a fucking day!

We wake up to news that Pat Robertson is dead.

And then the Supreme Court told us that the VRA is actually still a thing.

Then we get to see a Russian get eaten by a fucking shark (which was really fucking metal, BTW).

And now an indictment?

Christ almighty, at this rate I half expect to get a blowjob tonight.

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20471]

Lord, I'm a simple man. I've lived a mostly good life. I promise to be a creature of nothing but kindness and goodness for the rest of my days if you but let me see this orange fuck in a prison jumpsuit and with no access to the internet.

[Brisketexan 105261]

I mean....cool.  But y'all know the drill (ESPECIALLY with a Florida jury pool):

[Js1 85517]

@Beau Vine, it’s time