Lawyers in the White House, lawyers in the Senate, lawyers in the House of Representatives, lawyers at the F.B.I., lawyers at the C.I.A., lawyers in the Pentagon, lawyers in law firms, lawyers in lobbying firms, lawyers in the Special Prosecutors Office — and lawyers hired by just about everyone working there to make sure they are legally protected.
President Trump and members of his White House staff — and former staff — have hired lawyers to make sure the lawyers and their legal counsel on the various Congressional committees investigating what Russian collusion, if any, there was with the Trump campaign and members of the Trump family, during the 2016 presidential election, don’t find or make up facts supporting collusion.
As a former D.C. lawyer watching the hyper-news earlier this week, about the Special Prosecutor’s indictment of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates — as other lawyers are surely shoring up the defenses of their clients — who may, or may not, be swept up in the no-limits collusion political legal battles, I couldn’t help forlornly think of the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent in Washington D.C. on the latest Russian-roulette-political-legal-circus — appropriately during Halloween weekend. What is really depressing, is the fact that the legal costs of the annual D.C. political-legal circuses have grown into a terminal legal-political cancer since the good old legally affordable days of Watergate.
Those were the good ol’ days when money was spent wisely on education and social services. Not so foolishly on politically motivated multiple-ring-legal circuses.
Trump lawyers Ty Cobb, Donald F. McGahn II and John Dowd are duking it out with Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, and among themselves, whether to meet the Special Counsel’s demands for certain information and documents without surrendering the institutional prerogatives of the office of the president. Cobb has argued for turning over as many of the e-mails and documents requested by the special counsel while McGahn supports cooperation, but has expressed concerns about setting a precedent that would weaken the White House after Trump’s tenure is over.
Where does one draw the line between executive or attorney-client privilege?
To make matters worse today, we hear about lawyers overheard confidential client matters in restaurants, hallways and trains — including President Trump’s — that spread virally and then becomes the legal pundit-lawyers fodder on the news networks that continuously feeds the gorging legal-frenzy surrounding the D.C. circus — that further increases legal costs — and the need for more lawyers.
What a shameful waste! Surely America can do better?