Great overview of the Manafort situation

[Jetboogieman]

One of the finest new YouTubers out there, LegalEagle who is a practicing lawyer who provides really good insight into the law in entertaining ways, usually involving critiquing TV shows and movies for legal realism and teaching real legal concepts while he’s at it.

So I don’t believe this is partisan at all, this is just a straight assessment of the actual legal problems surrounding Manafort and how it may be related to President Trump.



If you honestly come out of this video just going “nah ah!”

You really don’t deserve to be taken seriously.

 

[Cardinal]

If it wasn't for legal professionals interpreting the news in real time I wouldn't know what the **** is going on.

 

[Jetboogieman]

If it wasn't for legal professionals interpreting the news in real time I wouldn't know what the **** is going on.

The thing that blows my mind though, is how neither sides lawyers realized the legal exposure remaining in the Joint Defense Agreement posed when Manafort accepted the plea deal.

I've learned quite a bit from this dude and I gotta wonder, without being a lawyer, the way he talks about it, and I could be wrong, is that would be something very obvious that you would want to avoid at all costs.

Are their lawyers this incompetent?

 

[Cardinal]

The thing that blows my mind though, is how neither sides lawyers realized the legal exposure remaining in the Joint Defense Agreement posed when Manafort accepted the plea deal.

I've learned quite a bit from this dude and I gotta wonder, without being a lawyer, the way he talks about it, and I could be wrong, is that would be something very obvious that you would want to avoid at all costs.

Are their lawyers this incompetent?

This is something Renato Mariotti has covered. LegalEagle was quite correct in his observation that Mueller could use discovery to seize the communications between Manafort's and Trump's lawyers. Mariotti was a bit more sober about it, pointing out that while this action was quite within Mueller's tool belt, it would also be a highly aggressive act. "Highly aggressive acts" have highly aggressive reactions, and Mueller has been pretty expert about spiraling inward around the edges toward Trump, never quite making a frontal assault. It's a strategy that has worked extremely well for Mueller thus far, and my guess is that he'd like to keep moving in this direction until, like every spiral, he ends up in the center.

Does this mean that Mueller won't make a frontal assault on Trump's lawyers this soon? Hell if I know. He's made a couple direct moves already, once in a raid on Manafort and again in the raid on Cohen. I guess it depends on how much he feels he can space them out.

I think Mueller is basically playing "Jenga." Move slowly and smartly enough and he wins. Move too quick and his freedom to conduct the investigation on his terms gets a whole lot messier.

 

[Jetboogieman]

This is something Renato Mariotti has covered. LegalEagle was quite correct in his observation that Mueller could use discovery to seize the communications between Manafort's and Trump's lawyers. Mariotti was a bit more sober about it, pointing out that while this action was quite within Mueller's tool belt, it would also be a highly aggressive act. "Highly aggressive acts" have highly aggressive reactions, and Mueller has been pretty expert about spiraling inward around the edges toward Trump, never quite making a frontal assault. It's a strategy that has worked extremely well for Mueller thus far, and my guess is that he'd like to keep moving in this direction until, like every spiral, he ends up in the center.

Does this mean that Mueller won't make a frontal assault on Trump's lawyers this soon? Hell if I know. He's made a couple direct moves already, once in a raid on Manafort and again in the raid on Cohen. I guess it depends on how much he feels he can space them out.

I think Mueller is basically playing "Jenga." Move slowly and smartly enough and he wins. Move too quick and his freedom to conduct the investigation on his terms gets a whole lot messier.

Thanks for that, whether Mueller would move to seize those communications remains to be seen.

But, what's just more puzzling to me, is how either sides lawyers seem to have missed or neglected to address such a glaring issue that could have major implications for both sides.

 

[Cardinal]

Thanks for that, whether Mueller would move to seize those communications remains to be seen.

But, what's just more puzzling to me, is how either sides lawyers seem to have missed or neglected to address such a glaring issue that could have major implications for both sides.

What I think is happening is that Trump is so perfectly corrupt that it's impossible to act competently and ethically in the radius of such corruption. More to the former, autocracies are not, as a rule, run competently. That's because the people are bound to service the needs of a leader and not the needs of any greater good (like principles, the country, or the corporation).

As a result, good lawyers won't work for him, good lawyers work for him and are corrupted, or he only attracts like-minded corrupt people. The result is incompetence every time.