Manafort’s Lawyer Said to Brief Trump Attorneys

Trump attorney Kevin Downing - guilty of ethical violations/obstructing justice?

In what at first glance appears to be a possible ethical violation worthy of disbarment not to mention possible obstruction of justice, the New York Times is reporting that one of convicted felon Paul Manafort's attorneys has been briefing Trump's on what evidence special prosecutor Robert Mueller has on Manafort and possibly other Trump co-conspirators.  This after Mueller revoked Manafort's plea deal since Manafort has been lying to federal investigators rather than fully cooperating with investigators.  That Manafort has been lying should come as no surprise given his sleazy activities in the past for four individuals and nations. What is a surprise is that a member of the bar would be working to subvert a federal investigation.  One can only hope that bar complaints are immediately filed against this individual and that they lose their law license.  Here are excerpts from the Times piece: 

A lawyer for Paul Manafort, [Trump’s] the president’s onetime campaign chairman, repeatedly briefed President Trump’s lawyers on his client’s discussions with federal investigators after Mr. Manafort agreed to cooperate with the special counsel, according to one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers and two other people familiar with the conversations.

The arrangement was highly unusual and inflamed tensions with the special counsel’s office when prosecutors discovered it after Mr. Manafort began cooperating two months ago, the people said. Some legal experts speculated that it was a bid by Mr. Manafort for a presidential pardon even as he worked with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, in hopes of a lighter sentence.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of [Trump’s] the president’s personal lawyers [who was forced out of a prominent law firm because of his own unseemly/unethical behavior], acknowledged the arrangement on Tuesday and defended it as a source of valuable insights into the special counsel’s inquiry and where it was headed. Mr. Manafort’s lawyer Kevin M. Downing told him that prosecutors hammered away at whether [Trump] the president knew about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting where Russians promised to deliver damaging information on Hillary Clinton to his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. [Trump] The president has long denied knowing about the meeting in advance. “He wants Manafort to incriminate Trump,” Mr. Giuliani declared of Mr. Mueller. While Mr. Downing’s discussions with the president’s team violated no laws [but may have violated bar rules of ethics], they helped contribute to a deteriorating relationship between lawyers for Mr. Manafort and Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors, . . . . That conflict spilled into public view on Monday when the prosecutors took the rare step of declaring that Mr. Manafort had breached his plea agreement by lying to them about a variety of subjects.

Mr. Manafort will now face sentencing on two conspiracy charges and eight counts of financial fraud — crimes that could put him behind bars for at least 10 years.

Mr. Downing did not respond to a request for comment. Though it was unclear how frequently he spoke to Mr. Trump’s lawyers or how much he revealed, his updates helped reassure Mr. Trump’s legal team that Mr. Manafort had not implicated the president in any possible wrongdoing.

Mr. Giuliani, who has taken an aggressive posture against the Russia investigation since Mr. Trump hired him in April, seized on Mr. Downing’s information to unleash lines of attack onto the special counsel. In his own recent Twitter attacks on the special counsel, [Trump] the president seemed to imply that he had inside information about the prosecutors’ lines of inquiry and frustrations. “Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie,” Mr. Trump wrote on Tuesday. [W]hen one defendant decides to cooperate with the government in a plea deal, that defense lawyer typically pulls out rather than antagonize the prosecutors who can influence the client’s sentence. For instance, a lawyer for [Trump’s] the president’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn withdrew last year from such an agreement with Mr. Trump’s lawyers before pleading guilty to a felony offense and agreeing to help the special counsel.

[L]aw enforcement experts said it was still highly unusual for Mr. Manafort’s lawyers to keep up such contacts once their client had pledged to help the prosecutors in hope of a lighter punishment for his crimes.

Mr. Manafort must have wanted to keep a line open to [Trump] the president in hope of a pardon, said Barbara McQuade, a former United States attorney who now teaches law at University of Michigan. “I’m not able to think of another reason,” she said.

If Mr. Manafort wanted to stay on the prosecutors’ good side, “it would make no sense for him to continue to share information with other subjects of the investigation,” said Chuck Rosenberg, a former United States attorney and senior F.B.I. official. He added: “He is either all in or all out with respect to cooperation. Typically, there is no middle ground.”

In another development on Tuesday, Mr. Manafort categorically denied a report in The Guardian claiming that he met with Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, around the time he joined the Trump campaign in the spring of 2016. Mr. Mueller’s team has been investigating whether any associates of Mr. Trump conspired with Moscow’s operation to influence the presidential election with documents stolen from Democratic computers and distributed by WikiLeaks. Some defense lawyers have suggested that prosecutors deliberately fashioned Mr. Manafort’s plea agreement to counter a possible pardon. In forcing Mr. Manafort to forfeit almost all of his wealth — including five homes, various bank accounts and an insurance policy — prosecutors specified that they could seize his assets under civil procedures “without regard to the status of his criminal conviction.”

Harry Litman, a University of California, San Diego, law professor and a former deputy assistant attorney general, said that he had seen similar provisions in other cases. But other legal experts said it seemed tailor-made to ensure Mr. Manafort would lose much of his wealth, no matter what Mr. Trump did.

It should be noted that Trump has had difficulty attracting top, ethical legal counsel since most top law firms want nothing to do with him.  

GOP Nightmare Looms in West Virginia

The GOP primary in West Virginia tomorrow will determine whether or not the Republican Party will face a possible reprise of sorts of the disaster that played out in Alabama and put Doug Jones, a Democrat in the U.S. Senate. Now that the Republican Party welcomes, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, right wing Christian zealots, anti-Semites and other deplorables into its ranks, it was only a matter of time before some of these individuals would decide to throw their hats into the ring as candidates.  Trump carried West Virginia by in excess of 40 points yet if Don Blankenship - a convicted felon who arguably was responsible for 29 deaths - wins the GOP nomination, national Republicans believe that Democrat Senator Joe Manchin could breath a sigh of relief and coast to re-election. The Hill looks at the panic that is sweeping Republicans in Washington.  Here are article excerpts:

The nightmare scenario for Republicans is upon them: Former coal CEO Don Blankenship — who was in prison a year ago — is the candidate with momentum in Tuesday’s GOP primary to take on Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). 

Two internal polls show Blankenship narrowly ahead of Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) and Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.), and Republicans are spooked.
Trump on Monday morning pleaded with West Virginia voters to back either of Blankenship’s opponents, reflecting the widespread belief in the GOP that Blankenship will lose to Manchin in November despite Trump’s popularity in the state.
Trump tweeted in a message that recalled the GOP disaster in December that saw Democrat Doug Jones elected to the Senate over a flawed GOP nominee, conservative Roy Moore.
If he wins on Tuesday, Democrats will have plenty to use against him. The former CEO of Massey Energy led the company during the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion that left 29 people dead. Blankenship was released from prison on May 10, 2017, after his conviction for willfully violating mine safety and health standards.
“If he’s the nominee, Joe Manchin skates to reelection,” one GOP source said of Blankenship on Monday. “He’s the dream opponent.”
Senate GOP leaders have publicly kept their distance from the battle out of concern that any moves to influence the outcome would be viewed by primary voters as meddling and ultimately backfire.
But Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 3 Senate Republican, told reporters after a closed-door leadership meeting that they’ve started discussing “the various scenarios.”
“Uh, don’t know. But let’s just hope and pray that that doesn’t happen,” he added with a laugh, asked what happens if Blankenship wins. “It wouldn’t be good.” . . . "It would not say good things about where the Republican Party is at,” the source said.
Blankenship is running a slash-and-burn campaign, and has been spending $100,000 per day over the final six days of the race.
He fired back at the president over his tweet, saying Trump has been misled by the “establishment.”
“No matter how much Cocaine Mitch McConnell and the D.C. Swamp creatures lie to the voters, and mislead our President, they cannot change the focus of our conservative voters,” Blankenship said on Monday. “We cannot be of The Swamp if we want to Drain The Swamp.” . . . while distancing himself from the president by telling local media that Trump “recommended people vote for a guy that was basically accused of pedophilia in Alabama.”
Blankenship told CBS News that he hadn’t ruled out running as a third-party candidate. But West Virginia has a “sore losers” law that blocks candidates from changing their party affiliation after losing the primary in order to appear on the general election ballot. He could, theoretically, stage a write-in campaign.