Special counsel Jack Smith’s team revealed the details of the employee’s about-face in a new filing.

A Trump employee who monitored security cameras at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate abruptly retracted his earlier grand jury testimony and implicated Trump and others in obstruction of justice just after switching from an attorney paid for by a Trump political action committee to a lawyer from the federal defender’s office in Washington, prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday.

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
    27·
    1 year ago

    Legal question.

    The lawyer was paid by the PAC to represent the employee. Who is the lawyer’s client? The employee or the PAC? Could the lawyer be in trouble for putting the PAC’s needs ahead of the employee’s?

    • journey01@lemmy.world
      18·
      1 year ago

      The client is the employee. The lawyer’s ethical duty is to the employee even though he is being paid by someone else. Same situation when your insurance company hires a lawyer to defend you in a lawsuit.

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
        3·
        1 year ago

        Yes, I was thinking that they were cutting it pretty thin not telling the employee to cut a deal. Hopefully, this will be another case of MAGA [Make Attorneys Get Attorneys]

    • flipht@kbin.social
      102·
      1 year ago

      Ianal, but I think they have a responsibility to at least let the defendant know about their options. Other than that, they can have a strategy or suggest the defendant accept the less good options.

      Sounds like this guy realized that their “help” wasn’t in his own interest.

          • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
            218·
            1 year ago

            I’m not commenting on anal sex. I’m commenting on the stupid practice of wild speculation summed up with a bizarre acronym. That acronym should die on reddit.

            • extant@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5·
              1 year ago

              I know exactly what you’re talking about, and my point still stands that when giving advislce you need to make it clear you are not a lawyer and if you are that you are not their lawyer when giving advice that could be misconstrued as legal advice and possibly cause liability issues. Telling someone directly “I am not a lawyer” or saying it as an acronym accomplishes just that. This isn’t a practice that stems from Reddit, but the legal system itself. While using it as an acronym was popularized over the Internet it’s certainly never been exclusive to Reddit but anywhere things may be construed as legal advice are.

                • extant@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  I agree to an extent, but you can still provide valued information without being a lawyer a few examples: a subject matter expert, sharing first hand experience, contact information, or documents one might need. Sometimes those things might even be better than advice received from a lawyer.

                  • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
                    11·
                    1 year ago

                    Fair enough. I guess my point is two fold: 1) “ianal” sounds stupid. 2) if you’re doing stuff like this so often you need an acronym for it, you probably should check yourself.

            • jeremyparker@programming.dev
              2·
              1 year ago

              It seems like you have a problem with the wild speculation, not the acronym. Which is legit, people don’t need to have opinions on every single thing they think about, and they certainly don’t need to share them. But it kinda seems like they’re going to anyway. And, in that case, what’s better, wild speculation or wild speculation that admits it?

            • rhsJack@lemmy.world
              42·
              1 year ago

              Agreed. I think both should die on Reddit. And, please, do it privately with another consenting adult. The “talking out of your ass about stuff you shouldn’t be talking about” stuff. And the butt stuff, too. But mostly the former.