Posted on 10/26/2017 2:03:13 PM PDT by Another Kansan
Here, the Clinton campaign and the DNC retained the law firm of Perkins Coie; in turn, one of its partners, Marc E. Elias, retained Fusion GPS. We don’t know how much Fusion GPS was paid, but the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid $9.1 million to Perkins Coie during the 2016 campaign (i.e., between mid-2015 and late 2016). [Snip] In its capacity as attorney for the DNC, Perkins Coie – through another of its partners, Michael Sussman – is also the law firm that retained CrowdStrike, the cyber security outfit, upon learning in April 2016 that the DNC’s servers had been hacked.
Just how f’ing dumb do they think we are that the leadership in the RICOs known as the HRC Campaign and the DNC had no clue about this dossier until it was published. I know they have no choice but to go this with this beyond-implausible explanation but COME ON!
A lot of people were willing to fall on their swords for Hillary because she had at least the potential of being able to exert massive political power. So they may hurt now but they could be rewarded later. That power has evaporated and it’s looking even worse for the future. Who will be willing to take the fall now?
Why? For plausible deniability in breaking the FEC laws...
I guess the person responsible at Perkins Coie is willing to get punished...
One of the elephants in the room is why Comey was willing to overlook the fact that a room full of Hillary lawyers without security clearances were allowed to have access to all of the email on her server which did include classified information?!
Client confidentiality games can cut both ways.
I got a question. if an attorney is shown to be an active participant in a crime with client do they lose attorney client privilege.
Do you mean kinda like when Mrs. Bill Clinton moved her government emails to her private server and then destroyed 30,000 of them?
I assume the business manager at Perkins Coie had a dickens of a task assigning the property expenditure code on these checks.
Hope some eager legal eagle tackles the topic.
Excellent post explaining how a legal intermediary can be used for sanitizing questionable activities.
Not sure the FEC is directly implicated here. If - and this is speculative - the goal was to put a sensational document in FBI hands while making it impossible for staff level special agents to find out anything beyond Fusion GPS, attorney-client privilege would be a pretty good stone wall.
Very fact specific question, but DC Bar Rule 1.16(a)(1) requires a DC lawyer to withdraw from representation if the representation is a violation of the rules of professional conduct or the law. It is well established that if a lawyer breaks the law they can be prosecuted and or disbarred. Interesting things happen when the lawyer of someone who is under investigation also needs to get a lawyer because of his/her involvement in the matter, effectively making the lawyer and client co-defendants. This fact pattern doesn’t happen too often, but it has happened.
From Senator Grassley:
Neither Fusion GPS, led by Glenn Simpson, nor Orbis, led by Christopher Steele, are law firms or attorneys. Fusion GPS also claimed it could not waive the attorney-client privilege, but clients in such a relationship can. So, it is unclear how attorney-client privilege could apply. The firm could not explain how its work was in preparation for litigation, which is required to obtain attorney work product protections. Moreover, given the firm’s efforts to share the dossier with journalists and members of Congress, it was clearly not the firm’s intention to keep the client-funded opposition research confidential.
Caught red handed. All they can do is what they always do, deny and obfuscate, attack the accuser, rely on liberal media to cover for them and hope their opposition screws up.
Reading Grssley’s letter(7 Jun 2017) to Fusion I find this paragraph telling:
“Regarding your claim of attorney work product privilege, your attorney has failed to explain how Fusion’s work was completed in anticipation of litigation. On a phone call with Committee staff, your attorney vaguely indicated that Fusion’s work was done in anticipation of the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Your attorney’s assertion lacked any detail necessary to properly consider its merit. Moreover, given the circumstances, it appears that Fusion’s work was conducted in anticipation of the presidential election, rather than in anticipation of any litigation—in which case the privilege does not apply.”
That tells me that the dossier was produced specifically to give the FBI and IC a reason to go to the FISA for surveillance of Trump and his staff.
Grassley’s letter https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/chairman-rejects-fusion-gps-excuses-withholding-documents-dossier-
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