Sheffield My bet is that if it weren’t for his interest in running for president again, Mr. Art of the Deal, Donald Trump, would be talking to his lawyer about what it would take to make a deal in Georgia, so it all went away. I should quickly add that he would be talking to the lawyers that he has left after he watched three of his former beat-the-steal team cop pleas and turn state’s evidence against him and the other co-conspirators who were trying to upend the certified results of Biden’s victory in Georgia.
Former president Trump has to sweating this case now. It’s one thing when a valet, chauffeur, or go-fer becomes a turncoat before a trial. That’s to be expected. Those folks are small fry that just got caught in the net and often were simply doing what they were told. But, lawyers flipping, that’s big trouble.
Trump would have believed that all the wildness and rage coming out of his mouth was protected by the legal rules governing attorney-client privilege. As all the experts are clear, that’s not a say-anything-you-want, get-out-of-jail card:
The attorney-client privilege does not cover statements made by a client to their lawyer if the statements are meant to further or conceal a crime. For this exception to apply, the client must have been in the process of committing a crime or planning to commit a crime.
For Trump, who probably thought lawyers were just people he could bully and buy to do what they were told, he may have thought all of this was just playing the political game. In his narcissism, he seems never to have realized that there’s a bright line that separates hardball, anything goes politics, and outright crime and conspiracy. Whether his army of lawyers ever warned him before he went there or not, he broke through that line by miles and miles, as the Fulton County prosecutor seems intent on proving in the Georgia RICO case.
When Sidney Powell flipped, he probably didn’t lose all that much sleep, because even Trump had realized she was whacked and shied away from her. When Kenneth Chesebro, a white shoe, Harvard, classic East Coast corporate lawyer type, flipped, he had to know that was trouble, since he would even look credible to a jury and be careful about what came out of his mouth. More recently when green as grass, younger, former out state Colorado prosecutor, Jenna Ellis, flipped with tears in her eyes, he had to realize that was potentially a fatal defection. She had been too close to him and Rudy Guiliani both in and out of the White House. She had already conceded she had knowingly fabricated stories about voter fraud in a hearing before the Colorado bar on suspending her law license. He had refused to pay her legal fees. He must have known she would fold, right?
For Trump, this is a train to hell running at high speed and off the tracks. His lead lawyer’s reaction to this trial wreck shows how desperate they are:
Steven H. Sadow, the lead lawyer representing Mr. Trump in the Georgia case, said the series of pleas shows “this so-called RICO case is nothing more than a bargaining chip” for the district attorney in charge of the prosecution, Fani T. Willis. He added that Ms. Ellis had pleaded guilty to a charge that was not part of the original indictment and that “doesn’t even mention President Trump.”
Well, yeah, of course it’s a bargaining chip, and they are all stacked up on the prosecution’s table. Worse, Willis didn’t have to give Jenna Ellis much of anything to get her to flip, allowing her to plead out on almost nothing. Furthermore, Sadow should know that none of us care what deal she made, because the only important thing in this trial is that she made a deal, and the deal is to testify against Trump and his gang.
Trump should have known that even as it ruins all of these peoples’ lives and careers, none of them want to go to jail for his nonsense. He better start thinking personally about that problem, too.