The coup attempt was a widespread conspiracy

Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder and chairman of the software company Oracle and the biggest backer of Elon Musk’s attempted Twitter takeover, participated in a call shortly after the 2020 election that focused on strategies for contesting the legitimacy of the vote, according to court documents and a participant.

The Nov. 14 call included Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.); Fox News host Sean Hannity; Jay Sekulow, an attorney for President Donald Trump; and James Bopp Jr., an attorney for True the Vote, a Texas-based nonprofit that has promoted disputed claims of widespread voter fraud.

  WaPo

The November 6 immediate fallout in the Republican party is looking less and less like a momentary stroke of conscience and more like attempts to disavow participation in the attempted coup.

It is the first known example of a technology industry titan joining powerful figures in conservative politics, media and law to strategize about Trump’s post-loss options and confer with an activist group that had already filed four lawsuits seeking to uncover evidence of illegal voting.

[...]

Details of the November 2020 call and questions about Ellison’s role in it were revealed in new filings made in litigation brought against True the Vote and its representatives by Fair Fight, a political action committee associated with the voting rights organization founded by Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

[...]

“Jim was on a call this evening with Jay Sekulow, Lindsey O. Graham, Sean Hannity, and Larry Ellison,” True the Vote’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, wrote to a donor on the night of the call, referring to Bopp, her organization’s lawyer. “He explained the work we were doing and they asked for a preliminary report asap, to be used to rally their troops internally, so that’s what I’m working on now.”

[...]

[An unnamed participant in the call] said the GOP megadonor was probably looped in by Graham, as part of a discussion about whether the Trump campaign had assembled an effective legal team.

[...]

Sekulow said his involvement in election-related litigation was limited, largely ending after he helped file a motion with the Supreme Court seeking to separate out mail-in ballots that arrived in Pennsylvania after Election Day from those that had come before. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. granted the motion on Nov. 6.

It should be obvious by now that Alito is a card-carrying MAGA activist, and Lindsey Graham is an amoral, self-serving POS.

True the Vote has raised its profile significantly in recent weeks by collaborating with conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza on a film that alleges there was widespread “ballot harvesting” in the 2020 election. The film, “2000 Mules,” was shown at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club last month and has become a focal point of ongoing efforts to deny the legitimacy of the election.

Several such claims were dismissed this week by the Georgia State Elections Board, casting doubt on the premise of the movie.

[...]

Oracle has contributed sizable sums to conservative causes, including as much as $499,000 in 2019 to the Federalist Society and as much as $499,000 in 2021 to the Internet Accountability Project, a nonprofit that accuses major technology companies of anti-conservative bias, according to corporate disclosures.

Obviously contributions of $500,000-plus trigger some sort of scrutiny.

Ellison personally has invested significantly in Republican candidates and causes. He hosted Trump for a fundraiser for his 2020 reelection campaign on the same day the administration took Oracle’s side in a high-stakes copyright dispute with Google unfolding at the Supreme Court. Ellison backed Graham’s reelection in 2018 to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And this year, he donated $15 million to a super PAC aligned with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), among the largest individual contributions this cycle.

[...]

Ellison joined the board of Tesla, Musk’s electric-car company, in 2018, disclosing that he had purchased 3 million shares earlier that year, which earned him 12 million additional shares in a stock split in 2020. He owns nearly all of the Hawaiian island of Lanai.

“I’ve always been very ambitious; I’ve always been very curious,” Ellison said in a 2018 interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business, describing how he dropped out of college and moved to Silicon Valley to work as a computer programmer, founding Oracle in 1977.

Ambitious enough to help try to overthrow democracy in America.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sad!

Pence told the president Tuesday during their weekly lunch that he does not have the power to block a congressional certification of the Electoral College results.

[...]

Trump tore into the report in a statement on Tuesday night, saying it was "fake news" and maintaining that Pence never made the remarks.

"The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act," Trump said.

  The Hill

We'll see in a few hours, won't we?

Trump applied new pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to interfere with the Congressional certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory on Wednesday.

[...]

“States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt process never received legislative approval,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning. “All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”

[...]

“THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND, MORE IMPORTANTLY, OUR COUNTRY, NEEDS THE PRESIDENCY MORE THAN EVER BEFORE - THE POWER OF THE VETO,” Trump tweeted. “STAY STRONG!”

  Politico

[D]uring his podcast "Jay Sekulow Live" on Tuesday, the attorney stated that he didn't think "that was what the Constitution has in mind."

"Some have speculated that the vice president could simply say, 'I'm not going to accept these electors,' that he has the authority to do that under the Constitution," Sekulow said. "I actually don't think that's what the Constitution has in mind."

He added, "If that were the case, any vice president could refuse any election."

Sekulow pointed out that the vice president's role to preside over the process is largely ceremonial.

  The Hill

And Al Gore would have been president.

Sekulow won't be a Trump attorney long saying things like that. I'm surprised he said anything at all. He obviously doesn't want to completely trash his future.

A federal appeals court on Saturday dismissed a lawsuit brought by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and other Republicans that sought to expand Pence's legal authority to effectively overturn Biden's presidential win.

The suit sought to sidestep federal election law when Pence presides over the joint session in Congress on Wednesday. Rather than certify Biden's win, he would be free to effectively change the results.

Pence's role in Wednesday's joint session is largely ceremonial. The role is governed by an 1887 Electoral Count Act, a law that the Republican lawsuit sought to invalidate.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump's lawyers: Jay Sekulow - Part 2

Jay Sekulow, one of President Donald Trump’s lead attorneys during the impeachment trial, is being paid for his legal work through a rented $80-a-month mailbox a block away from the White House.

The Pennsylvania Avenue box appears to be the sole physical location of the Constitutional Litigation and Advocacy Group, a for-profit corporation co-owned by Sekulow. The firm has no website and is not listed in national legal directories. The District of Columbia Bar has no record of it, and no attorneys list it as their employer.

But Sekulow, 63, is registered as chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice, a non-profit Christian legal advocacy group based in an expansive Capitol Hill row house a short walk from the Senate chamber.

A half dozen lawyers employed by the non-profit ACLJ are named in recent Senate legal briefs as members of Trump’s defense team — including one of Sekulow’s sons. The ACLJ, as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, is barred under IRS rules from engaging in partisan political activities.

The Republican National Committee has paid more than $250,000 to Sekulow’s for-profit CLA Group since 2017, when he was first named to Trump’s legal team as special counsel Robert Mueller was leading the Russia investigation, according to campaign disclosures.

[...]

Charity watchdogs for years have raised concerns about the blurred lines between for-profit businesses tied to Sekulow and the complex web of non-profit entities he and his family control.

[...]

The records from 2008 to 2017, the most recent year available, show that more than $65 million in charitable funds were paid to Sekulow, his wife, his sons, his brother, his sister-in-law, his nephew and corporations they own.

  AP News

Smells like the Trump charitable fund that recently got closed down by the courts.

Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, said Sekulow appears to be mixing his defense of Trump with his charitable endeavors. The group has issued a “Donor Alert” about ACLJ on its CharityWatch website.

[...]

“Regulators should investigate whether or not charitable resources, such as office, labor, equipment, etc., are being wrongly utilized to benefit Sekulow’s for-profit law firm.”

[...]

A 2005 investigation by the publication Legal Times reported about questionable spending at ACLJ, quoting former employees describing millions in charity funds being spent to support the Sekulows’ lavish lifestyle, which included multiple homes, golf junkets, chauffeur-driven cars and a private jet used to ferry then-Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The Guardian and The Washington Post reported additional details in 2017, shortly after Sekulow was named as Trump’s lawyer.

Over the 10-year-period examined by AP, the tax returns show nearly $37 million in charitable funds were paid by ACLJ to the CLA Group, the phantom law firm listed on court filings as defending Trump.

[...]

A Brooklyn native, Sekulow graduated from Mercer Law School in Georgia and briefly worked for the Internal Revenue Service before going into private practice in Atlanta with his former classmate Roth in the early 1980s. The pair specialized in buying and selling historic properties as tax shelters, but the business collapsed after disgruntled investors sued them over alleged fraud and securities violations. Court records show both Sekulow and Roth filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 1987.

Sekulow quickly remade himself as general counsel for the group Jews for Jesus.

[...]

The following year, records show Sekulow founded the non-profit Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), a charity “dedicated to the ideal that religious freedom and freedom of speech are inalienable, god given rights.”

In 1992, he was named chief counsel at the ACLJ, which was founded by televangelist Pat Robertson as a conservative counterweight to the left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union.

[...]

All six of the charity’s paid board members share the last name Sekulow, including Jay’s wife, Pam, and their sons, Jordon and Logan.

[...]

The Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance recommends at least five independent board members and not more than one who receives direct financial benefits. Bennett Weiner, who heads the BBB alliance, said it issued an advisory about ACLJ after the organization didn’t respond to requests for more information about its finances.

[...]

Federal law forbids charities from excessively benefiting those who have “substantial influence over the organization.” Owens said both the IRS and state attorneys general should investigate.

“This is an apparent web of organizations that seem to exist to pay compensation to Sekulow and his family members,” said Owens, who is now in private practice. “That pattern clearly raises questions for those entities that are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) as to whether they’re operating for a public benefit or the private benefit of Jay Sekulow and his family members.”

[...]

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, is investigating the potential abuse of charitable funds raised by the organizations tied to Sekulow. Spokeswoman Laura Brewer said it was unclear when that probe, begun in 2017, would be complete.

There's not so much a swamp in Trump's Washington, as a snake pit.

Part 1

Looks like the president's defense is still going great

Pretty sure the Mueller report Mirandized him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

(Yesterday's duds.)

UPDATE:

[T]he real heart of Herschmann’s presentation was a series of rhetorical questions that showed he had as much awareness of his clients as a lemming has of a cliff. For example, a lawyer representing this president* actually [said this about Joe Biden], in the chamber of the U.S. Senate, with the Chief Justice looking on.

One thing he apparently did not do however was to tell his son not to trade on his family's connections.

  Charles P Pierce

Is your head doing circles? Just wait...

[Do we]want the type of government where questions about suspect conduct are suppressed or dismissed as illegitimate because someone is intimidating or screams at or is just too important? No. That is precisely when an investigation is most important.

[...]

Can you imagine what House manager Schiff and his Democratic representatives would say if it were President Trump's children on an oligarchs payroll?

The president's lawyers: Jay Sekulow - Part 1

President Donald Trump's attorney and prominent Christian conservative lawyer Jay Sekulow is now being investigated by top lawyers in two states after a report surfaced this week claiming that millions of dollars were steered from his Christian nonprofit to himself, family members and related entities.

  Christian Post

This is actually an old story from 2017 that's back in the news due to his prominence as Trump's impeachment attorney.

As so many of these people, Jay is not a Christian. He's a duper of Christians, who are among some of the most gullible and dupable people on earth.

As President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial gets underway in the U.S. Senate, his ever-growing legal team is being led by the team of Jay Sekulow, a religious-right attorney who shares Trump’s dubious relationship to the truth as well as the president’s penchant for self-enrichment, together with White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who is part of an influential group of Washington, D.C. attorneys on the Catholic right.

[...]

In 2018, Sekulow was forced to admit that he had misled the public regarding a statement issued under the name of Donald Trump Jr. regarding the purpose of ​a​ 2016 Trump Tower meeting that ​Trump Jr. and other campaign officials had with Russian operatives​ in hope of obtaining “dirt” on his rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton. Sekulow ​claimed that the president had nothing to do with writing the statement, only to walk that back when contradicted by the president himself. [...] Last spring, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, told members of Congress that Sekulow had told him to lie ​to Congress about​ the fact that the Trump Organization continued to engage in negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow​even as Trump campaign figures met with Russian operatives.

[...]

More recently, revelations from the House Intelligence Committee and Lev Parnas [...] have placed Sekulow in the middle of team Trump’s machinations in Ukraine. It turns out that Sekulow told former Trump attorney John Dowd that the president was OK with Dowd representing Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman, undercutting Trump’s claims not to know Parnas. Sekulow was also named in a text by Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, as the person who could secure a visa for the corrupt Ukrainian former prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.

[...]

Sekulow has a long track record of promoting false right-wing claims and campaigns, including right-wing conspiracy theories about the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich and the claim that faithful Muslims cannot truthfully swear loyalty to the U.S. Constitution.​

[...]

In 1990, Pat Robertson, the erstwhile Republican presidential candidate and Christian Broadcasting Network founder, placed Sekulow at the helm of a new, Robertson-founded entity, the American Center for Law and Justice. The organization’s stated aim was to act as a counterweight to the American Civil Liberties Union.

[...]

Over the years, multiple reporters have investigated the ways that the ACLJ and an affiliated nonprofit, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism, have enriched the bank accounts and lifestyles of Sekulow and members of his family.

Sekulow’s lucrative family “nonprofit” business was first investigated by Legal Times’ Tony Mauro back in 2005.

[...]

It is the Jay Sekulow who, through the ACLJ and a string of interconnected nonprofit and for-profit entities, has built a financial empire that generates millions of dollars a year and supports a lavish lifestyle — complete with multiple homes, chauffeur-driven cars, and a private jet that he once used to ferry Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

[...]


In 2017, the Guardian reported that CASE had steered more than $60 million to “Sekulow, his family and their businesses” since 2000. In addition to paying millions to “Sekulow, his wife, sons, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew and their firms,” the Guardian reported CASE “has also been used to provide a series of unusual loans and property deals to the Sekulow family.”

[...]

The Washington Post also examined Sekulow’s finances in 2017, documenting that his family had been “paid millions from charities they control.”

[...]

Sekulow has said that the state has a “compelling interest to ban the act of homosexuality​,” and the ACLJ argued on behalf of state laws criminalizing gay sex that were overturned by the Supreme Court in 2003. In 2011, Sekulow claimed that the Obama administration’s decision to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court meant that Americans were “now living in a monarchy.”   Right Wing Watch

Funny he now aids and abets Trump's aspirations to a monarchy.

But perhaps even greater an attraction for Trump than Sekulow’s links to the Christian nationalist crowd that comprises an important part of Trump’s base is Sekulow’s prowess as a prevaricator in front of cameras and microphones.

[...]

Sekulow has also been a longtime opponent of the Johnson Amendment, the legal provision that prohibits overt electoral politicking by churches and other tax-exempt nonprofits. Part of the deal candidate Trump offered religious-right leaders in return for their political support was a pledge to make them more politically powerful by repealing the Johnson Amendment.

The best people.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Part 2

All the president's liars

Welcome to impeachment in the Trump era, where the president cheers on his attorneys as they blow right past any suggestion that they themselves were direct witnesses — if not culpable — in a scheme that helped make their client America’s third chief executive to be impeached.

It’s a theme that has been replayed throughout Trump’s life: The lawyers he brings in to authorize and defend his behavior end up in their own legal morass. Trump’s longtime legal fixer, Michael Cohen, is doing three years in federal prison for his election-season role in paying off women who alleged affairs with Trump. Former White House counsel Don McGahn ended up as a star witness for special counsel Robert Mueller after he had a front-row seat to Trump’s potential obstruction of justice. Rudy Giuliani has hired a team of criminal defense attorneys as the Justice Department investigates his recent behavior while serving as personal counsel to the president.

For now, Trump’s current attorneys appear to be embracing their role as supporting actors in a drama that will play out on the Senate floor for another week if not longer, sparring frequently with their Democratic investigators and leaving Chief Justice John Roberts to decide just how many more times he’ll need to serve as the chief of the Senate’s decorum police.

  Politico

The only time he's had any objection to anything is when Jerry Nadler accused the Republicans of treachery.*  He hasn't had any problem with Republicans absenting themselves for long stretches of time.  Or Trump's lawyers' various lies.

Even before opening arguments, House Democrats warned White House counsel Pat Cipollone that they have evidence showing he’s a material witness in their impeachment case and that he should consider removing himself from the president’s defense team for ethical reasons or risk “seriously damaging the fairness of the trial.”

That's no threat to the Trump cabal. Fairness is not what they're after.

Democrats prosecuting Trump had accused Cipollone and Sekulow of fudging facts to present a more sympathetic version of the Ukraine scandal that threatens to upend Trump’s presidency and his political future.

There's a missing word: accurately accused.

On Wednesday, House impeachment prosecutors name-dropped Giuliani more than 100 times during their opening presentations on the Senate floor. That was on top of nearly 60 mentions Tuesday [...] . And that’s in addition to 91 Giuliani references in the opening brief that the House filed last weekend.

[...]

As usual, Trump doesn’t appear fazed by the mounting criticism of his lawyers. He called Cipollone “a high-quality human being” during a news conference Wednesday at the conclusion of an international economic summit in Davos, Switzerland.

“I was very impressed with Pat,” the president added of Cipollone, whose arguments on the Senate floor marked the first time he’d said anything in public since taking the White House job in late 2018. “He had great emotion yesterday. Pat is a brilliant guy, but I've never seen that emotion. And that’s real emotion. That’s because he knows this is a hoax. And I was very proud of the job he did.”

Is this also a characteristic of narcissists - or authoritarians: pretense and show of emotion? Remember Kavanaugh? And Graham during Kavanaugh's hearing? Emoting seems to be prized. The spectacle is the thing. A tried and true weapon in the dictator's arsenal.  (And of the narcissists I know.)

As for Giuliani, Trump said he made the decision to keep arguably his most famous lawyer off his official Senate defense “because I don't want there to be a conflict.”

“I’d love to have Rudy on my team,” the president added. “But, you know, he could be a witness at some point, if this whole sham continues.”

And so could Cipollone. And Sekulow.

Lev Parnas, the Giuliani associate indicted on federal campaign finance violations, told NBC’s Rachel Maddow last week that Sekulow was well aware of Giuliani’s lead role in the Ukraine pressure campaign — even though he said Sekulow “didn’t agree with what Rudy was doing.”

Backing up his claims, Parnas supplied House investigators with an October 2019 email showing Sekulow spoke to the president about having John Dowd, a former Trump lawyer, represent Parnas as congressional investigators sought evidence about the Ukraine scheme.

But Trump doesn't know Parnas, right?

Cipollone is seen as someone in the middle of several episodes tied to the impeachment probe.

He’s the boss of John Eisenberg, the top White House national security lawyer whom several witnesses have identified as someone with direct knowledge of the president’s Ukraine actions. Cipollone has also signed off on several letters the White House sent to the House rejecting its requests for materials.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

*UPDATE:  Turns out that was only because our favorite Whiney Winnie tattled:

UPDATE 1/25:

He says he doesn't know Lev Parnas

In case you've been in a cave for the past three years, John Dowd was also a Trump attorney.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Rudy in doodoo

Ha.  Either even Trump himself doesn't want Rudy as his impeachment mouthpiece, or Jay Sekulow has threatened to quit if he puts Rudy on the team.

It's okay.  I think we can answer that question for you.

Front row, left to right:  Lev Parnas, Rudy Giuliani, Robert Hyde

Speaking of Jay Sekulow...

In an interview that aired Thursday night, Parnas, an associate of Giuliani, said Sekulow was "in the loop" but "didn't want to be involved in the Ukraine stuff." He said he heard Sekulow and Giuliani talk about the matter, and Sekulow "didn't agree with what Rudy was doing, but he knew what he was doing."

  The Week

Does this mean Sekulow "is unable to appear?"

Giuliani's legal woes are steadily mounting

And ensnaring others.

The scrutiny isn’t coming just from the previously known probes by FBI agents and the U.S. attorney’s office based out of Manhattan, according to two people familiar with the investigation. The criminal division of the Justice Department in Washington has taken an interest in the former New York mayor, too, meaning an expansion of resources that indicates the politically sensitive probe into the president’s personal attorney is both broader and moving at a faster pace than previously understood.

Adding DOJ’s criminal division to the Giuliani probe is sure to place additional scrutiny on William Barr, who as attorney general has final say over all department business.

  Politico

Well good.

Giuliani’s troubles aren’t just his alone. He has turned members of the Trump team he’s worked with over the past 18 months into potential witnesses for federal prosecutors, who are trying to unravel the tangled relationships he brought to the mix in advising the president while still juggling an international consulting business that promised proximity to the White House.

“He appears to be a subject, if not a target of an active investigation. So to have him be a part of the legal team would be troublesome to say the least,” said Greg Brower, who served as the FBI’s top liaison to Congress until 2018. “At best, it’s a messy situation and more likely it’s just completely dysfunctional.”

Notably, Giuliani was not at the White House earlier this week when his fellow Trump lawyers met with the president for a brief impeachment strategy session.

The bus is getting closer.

But in a series of text messages earlier this month, he downplayed his Ukraine work and insisted he could continue in his role as a Trump lawyer amid all of the scrutiny.

“I was never in Ukraine at all and my investigatory work was done when it was still possible Mueller would charge Russian collusion. Almost all of it was published in the Hill, so [Trump] and everyone else was aware of it," Giuliani said in an Oct. 18 message. "Hardly anything not public.”

"Since the public record is more extensive than what I did, he and all of you probably think I did more than I really did," Giuliani added then.

A few days earlier, on Oct. 12, Giuliani argued that his role on the Trump legal team shouldn’t be disrupted just because he’s resisting a Democratic-approved subpoena for documents.

Yeah, I guess he's finally gotten the message. Be careful crossing the street.

Giuliani’s only public comment in recent days was a cryptic Wednesday evening tweet.

[A] back-channel effort has been underway for more than a week to help find him an attorney — as speculation swirls that he could face charges on everything from violating federal statutes dealing with bribery, foreign lobbying registration and disclosure to making false statements to government officials.

There's always that presidential pardon he can hope for.

Jay Sekulow, the longest-serving member of the Trump legal team, rejected the idea that Giuliani was in any kind of legal jeopardy. He also dismissed questions that Giuliani had put the rest of the president’s outside lawyers into any kind of bind.

“We have no concerns about any of that,” Sekulow told POLITICO. “He’s a member in good standing of the president’s legal team.”

The bus is closer than I thought.

Giuliani has traveled extensively in the U.S. and abroad with Parnas over the past year, according to interviews and a series of photographs Parnas posted to his Instagram account that were made public earlier this week by The Wall Street Journal. One picture from late March taken at the Trump International Hotel in Washington included a caption Parnas wrote saying he was at a “celebration dinner” with Giuliani and other members of the Trump legal team, including Sekulow, Martin Raskin and Jane Raskin. It was posted a day after Barr released a controversial four-page memo summarizing Mueller’s Russia investigation that the special counsel would go on to criticize as failing to “fully capture the context, nature and substance” of his work.

Sekulow said he didn’t speak with Parnas at the event and downplayed the significance of the photograph posted from the March dinner at the Trump hotel. “He could have been at the dinner. I have no idea,” Sekulow said. “There were a lot of people at the event.”

We have to remember in all this that Bill Barr is still head of the DOJ.

A move to bring department headquarters — “Main Justice” as its widely known — deeper into the Giuliani probe is causing heartburn at SDNY, which is widely known for its autonomy and reputation as the “Sovereign District of New York.”

“You lose a certain amount of nimbleness and a certain amount of independence because now you are answering to someone above you,” explained a former senior SDNY official who said there’s “no way that Main Justice is not involved.”

“Is it something that people want? No,” this person said. “But in this environment it also gives you cover. You want Main Justice to be involved because it is politically sensitive.”

No, you don't want Main Justice involved, because it's led by a corrupt man who is doing Trump's bidding.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy

Giuliani was not at the White House earlier this week when his fellow Trump lawyers met with the president for a brief impeachment strategy session. Heeding concerns long vocalized by many of the president’s aides and outside allies that his media interviews were hurting the president, Giuliani has made no prime-time television network appearances over the past two weeks.

Giuliani’s only public comment in recent days was a cryptic Wednesday evening tweet, in which he said, “everything I did was to discover evidence to defend my client against false charges.”

  Politico

Lawmakers’ hyperfocus on Giuliani prompted a decision by Trump’s legal team to sideline its most famous member from handling any Ukraine matters as part of the president’s defense should Democrats advance a specific article of impeachment addressing the subject, according to a person familiar with the lawyers’ strategy.

They're killing each other.

Giuliani did not respond to questions for this story. But in a series of text messages earlier this month, he downplayed his Ukraine work and insisted he could continue in his role as a Trump lawyer amid all of the scrutiny.

“I was never in Ukraine at all and my investigatory work was done when it was still possible Mueller would charge Russian collusion. Almost all of it was published in the Hill, so [Trump] and everyone else was aware of it," Giuliani said in an Oct. 18 message. "Hardly anything not public.”

"Since the public record is more extensive than what I did, he and all of you probably think I did more than I really did," Giuliani added then.

[...]

[A] back-channel effort has been underway for more than a week to help find him an attorney — as speculation swirls that he could face charges on everything from violating federal statutes dealing with bribery, foreign lobbying registration and disclosure to making false statements to government officials.

Why's it taking so long to find Rudy an attorney?

Jay Sekulow, the longest-serving member of the Trump legal team, rejected the idea that Giuliani was in any kind of legal jeopardy. He also dismissed questions that Giuliani had put the rest of the president’s outside lawyers into any kind of bind.

“We have no concerns about any of that,” Sekulow told POLITICO. “He’s a member in good standing of the president’s legal team.”

We can see.





...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The conspiracy theory about the complaint form discussed

From Donald Trump on down, prominent Republicans used part of their weekend to falsely accuse Trump’s hand-picked intelligence community inspector general (IC IG) of secretly changing the requirements for intelligence workers to submit whistleblower tips as part of a “deep state” plot to clear the way for the Aug. 12 complaint about Trump’s phone call to the president of Ukraine.

The smoking gun in the putative conspiracy is an obscure government form, IC IG ICWSP Form 401, also known as the Disclosure of Urgent Concern Form.

[...]

According to the GOP and an army of conservative commentators, the old version of the form prohibited workers from submitting urgent complaints based on secondhand information. [...] That changed in early August, the false claim goes, when ICIG Michael Atkinson snuck through a hasty revision to the complaint form that reversed longstanding policy.

[...]

“It seems like they are jumping to a lot of conclusions based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the law, the regulatory framework, and the language on one form,” said Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute.

The kernel of fact near the center of the conspiracy theory is that there is, indeed, a new version of Form 401 dated August 2019.

A question on the form explicitly anticipates tips based on secondhand information, and asks the whistleblower to check a box: “I have direct and personal knowledge,” or, “I heard about it from others.” The Federalist used a screenshot of that field to illustrate its story.

What the article didn’t mention or screenshot is a nearly identical field gracing Form 401 since at least May 2018, making it impossible that it was added as an easement for Trump’s whistleblower. The major difference in the fields is that the old form includes three options instead of two, subdividing secondhand sources into outside source and “other employees.”

[...]

The requirement for firsthand whistleblowing only is completely made up.

[...]

The Federalist and supporters of the Atkinson smear also point to a two-page information sheet distributed as part of the May 2018 version of the form but not the August 2019 version. It’s unclear when it was dropped, but a paragraph in that now-excised preamble was headed, “First-Hand Information Required,” seemingly contradicting the form itself. “In order to find an ‘urgent’ concern credible, the IC IG must be in possession of reliable, first-hand information,” the text read in part. “The IC IG cannot transmit information via the ICWPA based on an employee’s second-hand knowledge of wrongdoing.”

Though the text is confusingly drafted—which may be why the entire preamble was canned—a careful reading shows it’s not erecting a new hurdle for filing a whistleblower complaint, but rather describing the type of evidence the IC IG has to gather to judge the complaint “credible” at the end of its 14-day investigation.

“It’s an explanation of the IG’s standard for assessing credibility,” said Sanchez in an interview with The Daily Beast. “The IG isn’t going to forward it to the DNI if it can’t corroborate secondhand or indirect information. The whistleblower’s job is not to investigate. That is the job of the IG.”

[...]

“Complainant was not a direct witness to President’s telephone call with the Ukrainian President on July 25, 2019,” the IC IG wrote on Aug. 26. “Other information obtained during the preliminary review, however, supports the Complainant’s allegation."

[...]

In other words, Trump’s whistleblower didn’t go through some shady “deep state” backdoor. He or she followed the process, and government investigators found the firsthand evidence themselves.

On September 27, The Federalist's Sean Davis falsely claimed that until recently, intelligence community whistleblowers were required to have “first-hand knowledge” of wrongdoing in order to have a complaint investigated. This claim, which has since been debunked as untrue, is based on an obscure government form that conservatives are claiming was recently changed when Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson reversed policy to allow secondhand information as the basis of a complaint. In fact, the statute that governs the process for intelligence community members to file whistleblower complaints has never included a firsthand knowledge requirement.

[...]

The debunked  claim has been pushed on Fox News at least five times since September 27.

  Media Matters

And, look who's pushing it:



Nice response to Trump's tweet:

The conspiracy theory was promoted by the president, Republican members of Congress, and a slew of right-wing media personalities. On Monday, Fox News continued to push the claim as a primary talking point.

On the September 27 edition of Hannity, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow claimed that “the form that so-called whistleblowers fill out” used to require firsthand information and “that was on the form literally until apparently very recently.”

Of course, it's Hannity and the Fox & Friends people who are pushing this angle heavily. And those are the Fox shows Trumpalos tune in to.

In his [Federalist] article, Davis wrote that “between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings” and that said action “raises questions about the intelligence community’s behavior” surrounding the complaint. Davis attempted to support his claim by citing forms available to the intelligence community to assist potential whistleblowers in filing complaints.

According to Davis, a form available in May contains language suggesting complainants must have firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing to file an “urgent concern” complaint -- the type of complaint filed by the Ukraine whistleblower -- but that the form was revised at some point to remove that language. (But according to a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, the likely explanation for the change was that the information in the previous form was inaccurate on the issue of firsthand knowledge and was therefore updated.)

To be clear, Davis’ claim that there was a firsthand knowledge requirement for filing a complaint is false. It simply does not exist in the statute that lays out the requirements of a successful “urgent concern” report. The controlling statute is 50 U.S. Code § 3033(k)(5)(G).

[...]

It is also important to keep in mind that despite numerous attempts by right-wing media to discredit the complaint because it is “hearsay,” that argument has been largely rendered moot as the central allegation of complaint -- that Trump asked Ukraine to investigate Biden -- has been corroborated. The fact that the “transcript” of the call released by the White House lines up with the central allegation of the complaint makes it immaterial how exactly the whistleblower learned of Trump’s actions, because the whistleblower accurately described them. The credibility of the complaint, which also alleged that the Trump administration moved the Ukraine call transcript into a highly classified computer system, is also bolstered by the White House’s acknowledgement that it did take that action.

  Media Matters

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  He's still at it.

Trump's lawyers under investigation

The House Intelligence Committee is investigating whether lawyers tied to President Trump and his family helped obstruct the panel’s inquiry into Russian election interference.

[...]

In recent weeks, the committee sent lengthy document requests to four lawyers — Jay Sekulow, who represents the president; Alan S. Futerfas, who represents Donald Trump Jr.; Alan Garten, the top lawyer at the Trump Organization; and Abbe D. Lowell, who represents Ivanka Trump. The lawyers all took part in a joint defense agreement by the president’s allies to coordinate responses to inquiries by Congress and the Justice Department.

[...]

The line of inquiry stems from claims made by the president’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, who told Congress earlier this year that the lawyers in question helped edit false testimony that he provided to Congress in 2017 about a Trump Tower project in Moscow. Mr. Cohen said they also dangled a potential pardon to try to ensure his loyalty.

  NYT

Is this going to be a "he said - they said" scenario?

The lawyers have so far balked at the committee’s requests. Mr. Schiff is prepared to issue a subpoena to compel cooperation if necessary, according to a senior committee official.

[...]

“Instead of addressing important intelligence needs, the House Intelligence Committee appears to seek a truly needless dispute — this one with private attorneys — that would force them to violate privileges and ethical rules,” [Patrick Strawbridge, who represents Mr. Sekulow] said. “As committed defense lawyers, we will respect the constitution and defend the attorney-client privilege — one of the oldest and most sacred privileges in the law.”

The lawyers raised other objections in response to Mr. Schiff’s initial request, writing that the inquiry “appears to be far afield from any proper legislative purpose.”

Moreover, they wrote, Mr. Cohen is a witness of “questionable reliability” and his current lawyer, Lanny J. Davis, has acknowledged that Mr. Cohen himself wrote the lines in question “that formed the basis of his guilty plea for lying to Congress, and not anyone else.”

[...]

The questions about Mr. Cohen’s false testimony and possible pardons are part of a broader inquiry by the committee into possible attempts to obstruct its investigation of Russian election interference and ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Raising the possibility of legal exposure for lawyers in the case is certain to further inflame tensions between the president’s team and Democrats who control the House.

[...]

While it is a crime to obstruct a valid congressional investigation and to conspire to make false statements to Congress, it would most likely be a difficult case to bring against lawyers working in the case. Even if it could prove wrongdoing, the committee has little recourse beyond referring the case to the Justice Department, and the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has already declined to investigate or to charge the lawyers involved.

[...]

In a statement, Mr. Schiff indicated that he was trying to send a message to other potential witnesses.

“If any individual is allowed to lie to our committee or encourage others to do so, hide behind inapplicable privileges, or otherwise fail to provide anything less than full cooperation, other witnesses will be emboldened to similarly obstruct, both now and in the future,” he said.

[...]

Mr. Schiff is taking a more aggressive approach and has argued that the committee is not obligated to honor attorney-client privilege, particularly if there is evidence that the lawyers aided a crime.

[...]

The Mueller report lays out several of Mr. Cohen’s claims. In it, he said that the lawyers had pushed him to remove a sentence disclosing that there had been “limited contacts with Russian government officials” in the course of the project.

Mr. Cohen also said that Mr. Sekulow told him that the details of an effort to set up a meeting between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia were “not relevant and should not be included in his statement to Congress,” the report said. Mr. Cohen and Mr. Sekulow spoke frequently before Mr. Cohen submitted his false statement, and Mr. Cohen said Mr. Sekulow told him he should not elaborate because the Moscow project had not progressed.

[...]

Vanity Fair later published the contents of emails between Mr. Cohen and his lawyer at the time, Stephen Ryan, in which Mr. Ryan detailed changes to the statement he said were requested by Mr. Lowell. Mr. Ryan also included what he said were edited drafts of the statement. The Times also reviewed the emails, which show Mr. Lowell asking that the statement assert that Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter, had essentially no knowledge of the proposal. Mr. Cohen later told Congress that he had, in fact, briefed Mr. Trump’s children regularly on his progress.

[...]

The special counsel assigned Mr. Cohen’s claims on the false statement at least some credibility in his 448-page report, but he appeared to pass on examining them fully. He did not, for instance, try to compel Mr. Sekulow to speak with investigators after he declined to do so voluntarily and did not obtain all draft copies of the statement. Nor is there evidence that he asked to interview other lawyers from the joint defense agreement.

That sounds like a stone or two unturned in the supposedly painstakingly detailed Mueller investigation.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump's lawyers are kept busy

President Trump sued his own accounting firm and the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight Committee at the same time Monday — trying an unusual tactic to stop the firm from giving the committee details about Trump’s past financial dealings.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the District of Columbia, seeks a court order to quash a subpoena issued last week by the committee to Mazars USA.

[...]

The move amounts to Trump — the leader of the executive branch of government — asking the judicial branch to stop the legislative branch from investigating his past.

Former House counsels from both sides of the aisle called the challenge a long shot and an apparent delay tactic.

[...]

Over the years, Congress has had broad leeway to use its subpoena power to probe possible corruption in other branches of government. For instance, during the 1990s the GOP-led House spent years investigating President Bill Clinton’s involvement in the “Whitewater” scandal, which began long before he was elected.

Trump’s lawsuit seeks to upend decades of legal precedent that have upheld Congress’s right to investigate, arguing that his past personal dealings are irrelevant to the legislative branch’s fundamental job: writing bills.

“There is no possible legislation at the end of this tunnel,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in their brief, talking about the Oversight Committee’s inquiry into whether Trump misled his lenders by inflating his net worth. “The Oversight Committee is instead assuming the powers of the Department of Justice, investigating (dubious and partisan) allegations of illegal conduct by private individuals.”

  WaPo

What do they think the Oversight Committee is for?

The Oversight Committee on March 20 asked the company for copies of “statements of financial condition” and audits prepared for Trump and several of his companies, including the one that owns the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington. The panel also requested supporting documents used to produce the reports and communications between the firm and Trump.

In a statement, Cummings called Trump’s suit “baseless.”

“There is simply no valid legal basis to interfere with this duly authorized subpoena from Congress,” Cummings said. “This complaint reads more like political talking points than a reasoned legal brief.”

Probably because that's what it is.

Trump’s lawsuit argues that Mazars should follow the code of professional conduct issued by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. It quotes one section that counsels CPAs against “disclos[ing] any confidential client information without the specific consent of the client.”

The next paragraph of that code, however, says that CPAs can release client information “to comply with a validly issued and enforceable subpoena.”

So, strike one.

Trump’s private attorney, Jay Sekulow, issued a brief statement saying, “We will not allow Congressional Presidential harassment to go unanswered.”

We'll jam up the works with bullshit as often and as long as we can. Jay Sekulow means to earn his pay (that he may never get).

On Monday, some legal experts were skeptical that the president’s tactic would succeed. They said courts generally have granted Congress fairly wide powers to investigate, even in cases where the investigation wasn’t connected to a pending bill.

“You can never say never because courts change and there are new judges, but this is way over the top,” said Kerry W. Kircher, who served as House counsel for the Republican majority from 2011 to 2016, referring to the suit. “I’m as confident as I can be that there’s no chance of success here on the merits.”

Kircher said that the courts would be “altering the whole arrangement of checks and balances” should they rule in favor of Trump.

And isn't that why Kavanaugh is now on the Supreme bench?

In Trump’s lawsuit, his attorneys cited a Supreme Court decision called Kilbourn v. Thompson, which found “no express power” in the Constitution for Congress to investigate individuals without pending legislation.

The problem with that argument, said University of Baltimore law professor Charles Tiefer, is that Kilbourn v. Thompson is a case from 1880.

And it was overruled by a decision in 1927, Tiefer said.

“It has not been followed for the last 90 years,” Tiefer said of the 1880 decision. Instead, the 1927 ruling found Congress has much wider powers to investigate — and courts since then have let that interpretation stand and even reinforced it.

Tiefer, a Democrat and former acting House counsel, said the main goal of Trump’s team may be not to block the subpoena forever but simply to delay it so any damaging information comes out after the 2020 election.

I would say that's a good bet.

Monday’s lawsuit comes amid a broader effort by Trump’s attorneys and the White House to resist congressional requests for information.

This month, the Treasury Department missed a deadline to hand over Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee.

White House officials also have been digging in their heels on other requests related to Trump’s actions as president.

The administration has signaled it does not plan to turn over information being sought about how particular individuals received their security clearances, Trump’s meetings with foreign leaders and other topics that they plan to argue are subject to executive privilege, according to several aides familiar with internal discussions.

[...]

The suit came as House Democrats issued another subpoena likely to touch a nerve for the president. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on Monday ordered former White House counsel Donald McGahn to testify before the panel next month and hand over documents and records pertaining to federal investigations of Trump, his finances, his campaign and allegations he sought to obstruct justice.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jay Sekulow's non-denial regarding Cohen's testimony

So that's a yes, then.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Cohen produced the edited docs

Michael Cohen on Wednesday provided the House Intelligence Committee with new documents showing edits to the false written statement he delivered to Congress in 2017 about the Trump Organization's pursuit of the Trump Tower Moscow project into the 2016 campaign season, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The documents Cohen provided are intended to further explain his public testimony last week, in which Cohen said that President Donald Trump's then-personal lawyer Jay Sekulow made changes to his statement to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, and that it was reviewed ahead of time by lawyers like Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the President's daughter and son-in-law who are both White House advisers.

It's unclear what Cohen's documents show was specifically changed in the statement. Cohen is testifying Wednesday behind closed doors at the House Intelligence Committee.

[...]

As CNN previously reported, according to two of the sources familiar with the preparation, including one close to the Trump Organization and one close to the President's legal team, the lawyers had no indication that any of the information in the testimony of Trump's now-former longtime attorney and fixer was inaccurate.

  CNN

Which makes me wonder what the changes they made were.







I guess we would need to know even before that, what changes were made.  If they made a change to his statement, then that implies 1) they believed it was false, 2) they knew it was true and they changed it to something false, or 3) they changed it so that it was vauge, but not false.

Two of the people familiar with the documents, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the closed-door session, said that at least some of the changes appeared to play down the knowledge of the president’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, about the project.

  NYT

They really want to protect Ivanka.

Cohen currently is scheduled to report to prison on May 6.  That extension from today's original date was in part to allow him to prepare for testimony.  Now that his testimony is complete, it seems like he ought to be able to get started.  Maybe he's being given some extra time for cooperating.  And maybe he's going to have to produce more documents.

But it looks like we might be able to move on from Michael Cohen for a while.  Just in time for Paul Manafort to get sentenced in Virginia tomorrow for bank and tax fraud.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



UPDATE 3/7:

Is his plan to stall the investigation until he can make a get-away?

If Trump doesn't stop tweeting obstruction and criminal admissions, Mueller will never finish the investigation.

President Trump said on Sunday that a Trump Tower meeting between top campaign aides and a Kremlin-connected lawyer was designed to “get information on an opponent” — the starkest acknowledgment yet that a statement he dictated last year about the encounter was misleading.

[...]

The president claimed that it was “totally legal” and of the sort “done all the time in politics.”

But the tweet also served as an admission that the Trump team had not been forthright when Donald Trump Jr. issued a statement in July 2017 saying that the meeting had been primarily about the adoption of Russian children.

[...]

It is illegal for a campaign to accept help from a foreign individual or government. The president and his son have maintained that the campaign did not ultimately receive any damaging materials about Mrs. Clinton as a result of the meeting. But some legal experts contend that by simply sitting for the meeting, Donald Trump Jr. broke the law.

[...]

Donald Trump Jr. issued his statement in July 2017 after The New York Times revealed the existence of the meeting. The meeting’s true purpose was exposed a few days later when The Times published emails between Donald Trump Jr. and Rob Goldstone, a British-born former tabloid reporter and entertainment publicist who helped arrange it. Mr. Goldstone said he had “something very interesting” — sensitive information that “is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

After the meeting was revealed, Mr. Trump posted a tweet similar to the one he wrote on Sunday morning: “Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That’s politics!” But his administration at the time was sticking to the adoption story line.

[...]

Numerous White House aides and lawyers for the president aggressively denied at the time that the president had been involved in drafting the misleading statement. Jay Sekulow, one of the president’s lawyers, said in 2017 that “the president was not involved in the drafting of that statement.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the current press secretary, insisted that the president “certainly didn’t dictate” the statement.

But The Post reported in July 2017 that Mr. Trump had in fact done so. And earlier this year, Mr. Trump’s lawyers acknowledged in a memo to Mr. Mueller that the president had dictated the statement.

On Sunday, Mr. Sekulow admitted that his earlier statement had been erroneous, saying on ABC News’s “This Week” that “I had bad information at that time and made a mistake in my statement.”

In the interview, Mr. Sekulow said that it was not clear what laws the president’s son and the other campaign officials at the Trump Tower meeting might have violated when they met with the Kremlin-connected lawyer.

“Well, the question is: How would it be illegal?” Mr. Sekulow said. “What law, statute or rule or regulation’s been violated? Nobody’s pointed to one.”

  NYT

Really? He knows the answer to that. Evidently they are going to argue that seeking a meeting to receive dirt on Hillary in order to help win the election is not a "thing of value." What a sleaze. Then again, I guess it would take a sleaze lawyer to represent a sleaze client.

Asked about the Trump Tower meeting, he repeatedly steered his answers back to attacks on Mr. Mueller’s investigation.

“Let’s be honest with the American people, there are irregularities in this investigation the likes of which we have not seen,” Mr. Sekulow said, mimicking one of the president’s favorite phrases.

Yep. Sleaze One and Sleaze Two.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Rudy claim clarity - Part 2

This clears it up for me.  Rudy is still full of shit.




Mueller, nor anyone on Mueller's team told Rudy they couldn't indict.  Rudy interpreted that for himself. Or rather, for Trump and Trumpettes.  And it wasn't even to Rudy.  Whatever was said, was apparently said to Jay Sekulow.



What a surprise.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sean's in trouble: they're digging now

And look what they found:

On May 25, 2017, KFAQ, a radio station based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, received a cease-and-desist letter signed by two lawyers for Hannity: Victoria Toensing and Jay Alan Sekulow. Toensing’s signature sits above her name and that of her husband Joseph E. diGenova, the members of diGenova and Toensing LLP, who are identified as “Counsel for Sean Hannity,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Atlantic. Sekulow is also identified in the letter page as a “Counsel for Sean Hannity.”

Sekulow is now the only known personal attorney for President Trump working full-time on the response to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry. Sekulow recently announced that diGenova and Toensing had been hired to join him, before reversing course. The letter to the radio station was sent before Sekulow joined Trump’s team.

The letter was sent in response to accusations against Hannity made by the controversial conservative activist Debbie Schlussel. During an appearance on the Pat Campbell show on KFAQ last April, Schlussel said Hannity had been “creepy” towards her and had invited her to his hotel room.

Hannity responded at the time by calling the allegations “100 percent false and a complete fabrication,” and said that he had hired lawyers to plan a response.

[...]

On Monday, Schlussel said she remembered that the radio station where she made the remarks had received a legal letter afterwards, but she didn’t know who the lawyer was. Reached by phone on Tuesday, Toensing acknowledged that “at that time” she was acting as Hannity’s lawyer but wouldn’t comment on whether she still represents him.

“I’ve just learned in the press that anybody who is Sean Hannity’s lawyer is going to be blasted so I think this phone call is over,” Toensing said. “I’m wondering what attorney-client privilege means to anybody. I don’t say who my clients are, sometimes I do, and many times, most of the time, I do not.”

[...]

Sekulow, diGenova, and Toensing have frequently appeared on Hannity’s program; diGenova appeared on the show as recently as Monday night.

  The Atlantic

I won't be surprised if one day we find that Hannity is a subject of the Mueller probe as well. At least that he's involved in some money laundering real estate.

Which makes me wonder if Hannity is the conflict reason diGenova couldn't take on Trump representation recently.

A nest of snakes.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Annnnd...yet another law firm that won't represent Trump

A prominent Chicago defense attorney said Monday that he had declined an invitation to lead President Trump’s legal team responding to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, underscoring the president’s difficulty in attracting top legal talent to represent him in the probe.

Dan K. Webb, a Republican, is a former U.S. attorney for Illinois and a corporate and white-collar-defense lawyer for the firm Winston and Strawn.

  WaPo

And, apparently not a total fool.

I thought Trump was "happy with" the attorneys he has now and wasn't looking for any new ones.

Two days ago:

Whatever.

In a statement, his firm said the president and his team recently reached out to Webb and D.C.-based partner Tom Buchanan.

“They were unable to take on the representation due to business conflicts. However they consider the opportunity to represent the President to be the highest honor and they sincerely regret that they cannot do so,” the firm said.

Yeah, we know.

Trump and his allies have been reaching out to several lawyers in recent weeks, including some who had turned Trump down after he interviewed them last spring and summer to be his personal lawyer in Mueller’s investigation into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election and whether the president’s campaign coordinated with Russia in this effort.

He thought hee had a better chance NOW?

Well, he has Cobb and Sekulow. Actually, really only Sekulow for a personal attorney. Cobb represents the office of the president.

Sekulow is a constitutional lawyer and radio host who has been quick to acknowledge that he lacks the experience to oversee a complex criminal investigation like the one the White House and Trump now face.

Oh, darn.

Sekulow is a constitutional lawyer and radio host who has been quick to acknowledge that he lacks the experience to oversee a complex criminal investigation like the one the White House and Trump now face.

[...]

Trump had asked Sekulow to reach out to Theodore B. Olson on March 19. By the next morning, after The Washington Post reported the offer to Olson, his firm — Gibson, Dunn — was insisting that Olson would not take the job.

Olson said Monday in a television appearance on MSNBC that the White House appeared to be in regular “turmoil” and “chaos” with a new departure and White House shake-up every other day. “This seems to be beyond normal,” Olson said.

So, not likely to change his mind about representation, huh?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.