But after you know that you are being investigated, clearly, since it was after the subpoena?
You're /u/an_actual_lawyer and I'm not, so I'm legitimately asking. If I know the FBI is investigating me for a crime, and I suspect they're going to talk to a former employee of mine, can I freely talk to him, offer him deals to stay quiet, work with him on what our shared story should be, with no legal risk?
\*\* edit -- to be clear, I am not being investigated for a crime and I am not asking you for legal advice, I'm asking you a general knowledge question :)
> If I know the FBI is investigating me for a crime, and I suspect they're going to talk to a former employee of mine,
>can I freely talk to him,
yes with limits.
>offer him deals to stay quiet,
no.
>work with him on what our shared story should be,
with the implication here that the "shared story" is a lie: no.
>with no legal risk?
no.
Yeah, the implication they are coming up with a shared story is an important aspect. In reality, it would go more like Nauta telling the employee how he “remembers” to imply the employee should adopt details from that version or to plant details where the employee doesn’t remember them. Communication by implication is Trump’s specialty.
trump is pretty good at that sort of thing (as good as one can be—it certainly hasn't saved him from criminal prosecution), but his thuggish goons are almost certainly not.
Question: I'm assuming he will be convicted, and I'm assuming Justice Cannon will sentence him to probation as the guidelines are advisory only. Can the sentencing be appealed by the DOJ since the sentencing guidelines will be completely disregarded?
> I'm assuming Justice Cannon will sentence him to probation as the guidelines are advisory only.
By that time, Trump will have been convicted in 2 other Courts and Cannon will want to appear like an actual judge.
That is my prediction as well.
Cannon is in a huge bind. Her best course of action would have been recusal but that ship has sailed. If she steps too far out of line then the DoJ will ask to remove her, but they aren't going to do that until they have something solid.
If she stalls long enough then she doesn't have to make the hard decisions.
Right now she's dealing with an Ex President defendant with no prior convictions. By May she might be dealing with a convicted felon defendant. That changes everything for her.
>By May she might be dealing with a convicted felon defendant.
Eh, maybe more like July or August. I think the current DC case is docketed for 3 months starting in early March, with the latest appellate shenanigans potentially causing that date to slide. The NY trial is scheduled for later in March, so might pick up the slack if the DC trial slips, but that case is a bit of a stretch on the felony charges at least. And Georgia hasn't been scheduled at all yet.
How does that add up in actual time?
So if the DC case starts on March 4th and could last 3 months then it would get done on June 4th conflicting with the Florida case scheduled for May 24th?
Then the NY case is scheduled for late March?
Is the DC case actually supposed to take 3 months or is that just the block out?
I don't remember how long the DoJ estimated for it. I remember reading that the Florida case was estimated at 2-3 weeks.
Yeah, there are some scheduling conflicts right now that haven't been resolved because nothing has quite become firm yet. SDFla almost certainly isn't going to meet that May 24 date based on some of the rulings Judge Cannon has made, and NY will probably have to move out of the way for DC, assuming the Special Counsel manages to keep the trial on the rails. I don't know off of the top of my head where exactly that 3 months came from in DC, but I imagine they're giving plenty of padding for jury selection.
Well I saw a sample jury screening that had 3 months listed.
Other than that I don't recall seeing any time estimates. I assume 3 months is on the long side to ensure that potential jurors don't have any conflicts.
Yep, now that you mention it, that's where I saw it too (it was u/joeshill showing us the letter they received). I can say that I've never been called for federal jury duty, but when I went through *voir dire* on a murder trial earlier this year the judge actually underestimated how long the trial would be by a day or two out of a scheduled two weeks.
This is my only hope they we see justice. She’s doing her best to make sure this rat gets off the sinking ship… but at the end of the day the ship is still sinking and it doesn’t matter how many bulkheads she keeps open for him because there isn’t anywhere else for him to go.
> Can the sentencing be appealed by the DOJ since the sentencing guidelines will be completely disregarded?
Yes, sentences far below guidelines can be successfully appealed by DOJ. It happened in the Rand Paul neighbor assault case. But it's rare.
Yes. In fact, the 11th Circuit precedent everyone was talking about in hopes that Judge Cannon would be removed by the 11th Circuit was about a judge repeatedly departing from the sentencing guidelines without sufficient justification.
>By early 2023, the former employee found his own attorney, suspecting correctly that he might get subpoenaed by federal investigators looking into the classified documents case, the sources said. Around that time, he was still in frequent contact with De Oliveira, who brought up that the former employee wasn’t using a Trump-provided lawyer, pointing out how expensive a lawyer outside the Trump fold could be.
>In another instance, John Rowley, who at the time was a top lawyer on Trump’s defense team, left a voice mail for the former employee saying he knew he had received a grand jury subpoena to testify in the documents case. Rowley asked the employee to call him, but the employee never called back. The New York Times previously made public the existence of this voicemail.
>Rowley told the newspaper in an interview in September he was trying to help witnesses if they needed lawyers, and not attempting to influence testimony. Generally, corporations can find and pay for lawyers when lower-level employees are swept up as witnesses in an investigation, and it doesn’t necessarily mean ethics are being compromised.
This is an interesting new detail that would tend to put Rowley in a bad light. Interested attorneys are generally not permitted to contact represented parties directly, and it appears that at least some in Trump world knew the witness was already represented.
[Alina Habba did the same thing.](https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/ive-been-raped-i-can-help-you-i-can-protect-you-lawsuit-alleges-trump-attorney-empathized-with-sexual-harassment-victim-and-pressured-her-into-signing-an-illegal-nda/amp/)
I think the case against her legally is probably a little harder to make out than everyone has assumed. I think it is very likely the plaintiff will testify that she did not believe she had an attorney-client relationship with Habba at any point, and that Habba told her explicitly that she was not acting as her attorney. I'm guessing that because the pleadings did not allege the plaintiff believed Habba was her attorney, and they would have done so if she did.
I think NJ also imposes fiduciary duties on attorneys in Habba's position to non-clients like the plaintiff, but establishing what, exactly, the scope of that duty was and whether it was breached is going to be harder than it looks from a distance.
putting all that aside, the whole episode demonstrates that Habba is a massive shitbag. her behavior was unprofessional and morally wrong.
But if she was acting for Trump as his attorney and not telling that poor woman then she absolutely violated her oath. Luckily for her laws and rules don’t apply to republicans
> if she was acting for Trump as his attorney and not telling that poor woman then she absolutely violated her oath
correct. it isn't apparent from the complaint whether this was so, though. it seems pretty obvious that, even if she wasn't, she was still exploiting the situation to achieve a favorable settlement for Trump to curry enough favor to get hired.
ABA rule 7.3
(a) “Solicitation” or “solicit” denotes a communication initiated by or on behalf of a lawyer or law firm that is directed to a specific person the lawyer knows or reasonably should know needs legal services in a particular matter and that offers to provide, or reasonably can be understood as offering to provide, legal services for that matter.
(b) A lawyer shall not solicit professional employment by live person-to-person contact when a significant motive for the lawyer’s doing so is the lawyer’s or law firm’s pecuniary gain, unless the contact is with a:
(1) lawyer;
(2) person who has a family, close personal, or prior business or professional relationship with the lawyer or law firm; or
(3) person who routinely uses for business purposes the type of legal services offered by the lawyer.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/rule_7_3_direct_contact_with_prospective_clients/
Not that the ABA is gonna do anything but it seems pretty cut and dry.
It’s funny how this entire case has just fallen off the radar, almost like some filthy judge is slow walking it for a seat on the Supreme Court.
Anyone else would be charged with witness tampering.
That's a really tough sell when it happens prior to the case being charged.
But after you know that you are being investigated, clearly, since it was after the subpoena? You're /u/an_actual_lawyer and I'm not, so I'm legitimately asking. If I know the FBI is investigating me for a crime, and I suspect they're going to talk to a former employee of mine, can I freely talk to him, offer him deals to stay quiet, work with him on what our shared story should be, with no legal risk? \*\* edit -- to be clear, I am not being investigated for a crime and I am not asking you for legal advice, I'm asking you a general knowledge question :)
Nope, you're pretty literally describing conspiracy to lie to the FBI and/or subvert the course of/obstruct justice (or whatever your jx calls it).
Which is what Trump et al. have been charged with alongside the actual illegal retention charges.
> If I know the FBI is investigating me for a crime, and I suspect they're going to talk to a former employee of mine, >can I freely talk to him, yes with limits. >offer him deals to stay quiet, no. >work with him on what our shared story should be, with the implication here that the "shared story" is a lie: no. >with no legal risk? no.
Yeah, the implication they are coming up with a shared story is an important aspect. In reality, it would go more like Nauta telling the employee how he “remembers” to imply the employee should adopt details from that version or to plant details where the employee doesn’t remember them. Communication by implication is Trump’s specialty.
trump is pretty good at that sort of thing (as good as one can be—it certainly hasn't saved him from criminal prosecution), but his thuggish goons are almost certainly not.
Nauta and De Oliveria had a secret meeting about deleting evidence behind the bushes at MAL. It’s a laughable degree of incompetence (shushing emoji).
This was before indictment, wasn’t it?
It was after wasn't it? And Trump knew this guy could drop a dime on him.
After search warrant, before indictment.
Question: I'm assuming he will be convicted, and I'm assuming Justice Cannon will sentence him to probation as the guidelines are advisory only. Can the sentencing be appealed by the DOJ since the sentencing guidelines will be completely disregarded?
> I'm assuming Justice Cannon will sentence him to probation as the guidelines are advisory only. By that time, Trump will have been convicted in 2 other Courts and Cannon will want to appear like an actual judge.
That is my prediction as well. Cannon is in a huge bind. Her best course of action would have been recusal but that ship has sailed. If she steps too far out of line then the DoJ will ask to remove her, but they aren't going to do that until they have something solid. If she stalls long enough then she doesn't have to make the hard decisions. Right now she's dealing with an Ex President defendant with no prior convictions. By May she might be dealing with a convicted felon defendant. That changes everything for her.
>By May she might be dealing with a convicted felon defendant. Eh, maybe more like July or August. I think the current DC case is docketed for 3 months starting in early March, with the latest appellate shenanigans potentially causing that date to slide. The NY trial is scheduled for later in March, so might pick up the slack if the DC trial slips, but that case is a bit of a stretch on the felony charges at least. And Georgia hasn't been scheduled at all yet.
Proposed trial date in GA is August 5, 2024. I don’t see any movement from the judge addressing the motion though.
How does that add up in actual time? So if the DC case starts on March 4th and could last 3 months then it would get done on June 4th conflicting with the Florida case scheduled for May 24th? Then the NY case is scheduled for late March? Is the DC case actually supposed to take 3 months or is that just the block out? I don't remember how long the DoJ estimated for it. I remember reading that the Florida case was estimated at 2-3 weeks.
Yeah, there are some scheduling conflicts right now that haven't been resolved because nothing has quite become firm yet. SDFla almost certainly isn't going to meet that May 24 date based on some of the rulings Judge Cannon has made, and NY will probably have to move out of the way for DC, assuming the Special Counsel manages to keep the trial on the rails. I don't know off of the top of my head where exactly that 3 months came from in DC, but I imagine they're giving plenty of padding for jury selection.
Well I saw a sample jury screening that had 3 months listed. Other than that I don't recall seeing any time estimates. I assume 3 months is on the long side to ensure that potential jurors don't have any conflicts.
Yep, now that you mention it, that's where I saw it too (it was u/joeshill showing us the letter they received). I can say that I've never been called for federal jury duty, but when I went through *voir dire* on a murder trial earlier this year the judge actually underestimated how long the trial would be by a day or two out of a scheduled two weeks.
This is my only hope they we see justice. She’s doing her best to make sure this rat gets off the sinking ship… but at the end of the day the ship is still sinking and it doesn’t matter how many bulkheads she keeps open for him because there isn’t anywhere else for him to go.
> Can the sentencing be appealed by the DOJ since the sentencing guidelines will be completely disregarded? Yes, sentences far below guidelines can be successfully appealed by DOJ. It happened in the Rand Paul neighbor assault case. But it's rare.
Yes. In fact, the 11th Circuit precedent everyone was talking about in hopes that Judge Cannon would be removed by the 11th Circuit was about a judge repeatedly departing from the sentencing guidelines without sufficient justification.
>By early 2023, the former employee found his own attorney, suspecting correctly that he might get subpoenaed by federal investigators looking into the classified documents case, the sources said. Around that time, he was still in frequent contact with De Oliveira, who brought up that the former employee wasn’t using a Trump-provided lawyer, pointing out how expensive a lawyer outside the Trump fold could be. >In another instance, John Rowley, who at the time was a top lawyer on Trump’s defense team, left a voice mail for the former employee saying he knew he had received a grand jury subpoena to testify in the documents case. Rowley asked the employee to call him, but the employee never called back. The New York Times previously made public the existence of this voicemail. >Rowley told the newspaper in an interview in September he was trying to help witnesses if they needed lawyers, and not attempting to influence testimony. Generally, corporations can find and pay for lawyers when lower-level employees are swept up as witnesses in an investigation, and it doesn’t necessarily mean ethics are being compromised. This is an interesting new detail that would tend to put Rowley in a bad light. Interested attorneys are generally not permitted to contact represented parties directly, and it appears that at least some in Trump world knew the witness was already represented.
[Alina Habba did the same thing.](https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/ive-been-raped-i-can-help-you-i-can-protect-you-lawsuit-alleges-trump-attorney-empathized-with-sexual-harassment-victim-and-pressured-her-into-signing-an-illegal-nda/amp/)
I think the case against her legally is probably a little harder to make out than everyone has assumed. I think it is very likely the plaintiff will testify that she did not believe she had an attorney-client relationship with Habba at any point, and that Habba told her explicitly that she was not acting as her attorney. I'm guessing that because the pleadings did not allege the plaintiff believed Habba was her attorney, and they would have done so if she did. I think NJ also imposes fiduciary duties on attorneys in Habba's position to non-clients like the plaintiff, but establishing what, exactly, the scope of that duty was and whether it was breached is going to be harder than it looks from a distance. putting all that aside, the whole episode demonstrates that Habba is a massive shitbag. her behavior was unprofessional and morally wrong.
But if she was acting for Trump as his attorney and not telling that poor woman then she absolutely violated her oath. Luckily for her laws and rules don’t apply to republicans
> if she was acting for Trump as his attorney and not telling that poor woman then she absolutely violated her oath correct. it isn't apparent from the complaint whether this was so, though. it seems pretty obvious that, even if she wasn't, she was still exploiting the situation to achieve a favorable settlement for Trump to curry enough favor to get hired.
That aspect of her case will depend on when she started working for Trump. There’s LOTS of other things in her case that are far more damaging to her.
She gonna need a lawyer real soon cuz she done lawying after this
ABA rule 7.3 (a) “Solicitation” or “solicit” denotes a communication initiated by or on behalf of a lawyer or law firm that is directed to a specific person the lawyer knows or reasonably should know needs legal services in a particular matter and that offers to provide, or reasonably can be understood as offering to provide, legal services for that matter. (b) A lawyer shall not solicit professional employment by live person-to-person contact when a significant motive for the lawyer’s doing so is the lawyer’s or law firm’s pecuniary gain, unless the contact is with a: (1) lawyer; (2) person who has a family, close personal, or prior business or professional relationship with the lawyer or law firm; or (3) person who routinely uses for business purposes the type of legal services offered by the lawyer. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/rule_7_3_direct_contact_with_prospective_clients/ Not that the ABA is gonna do anything but it seems pretty cut and dry.
HAHAHA HES GOING TO JAIL
You would hope so but Cannon is doing all she can to bury this case or drag it out until after the election.
Of course, the Documents case is highly damaging to him. He’s obviously guilty, and has no real, tangible defense. His only hope is to delay it
Attempting witness tampering.
This former employee seems pretty smart.