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.
The aide — described as “Trump Employee 4” in public court filings but identified elsewhere as Yuscil Taveras — held the title of director of information technology at Mar-a-Lago. He initially testified to a grand jury in Washington, D.C., that he was unaware of any effort to erase the videos, but after getting the new attorney “immediately … retracted his prior false testimony” and detailed the alleged effort to tamper with evidence related to the investigation of the handling of classified information stored at Trump’s Florida home, the new submission said.
Whoever that lawyer was, he or she is the second Trump-funded lawyer I know of who encouraged their clients to commit perjury.
A Trump-allied attorney who previously represented a key January 6 witness urged her to mislead the January 6 committee about details she recalled, according to CNN.
The committee did not identify the witness or the person they claimed tried to influence the testimony, but CNN reported that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the Trump White House who represented former aide Cassidy Hutchinson, was the lawyer.
Passantino advised Hutchinson, an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did, sources told CNN.
These guys need to have the book thrown at them.
There’s plenty of Federal precedent for at least a significant fine for “woodshedding”, and the 5th Circuit (of all circuits, what are the odds) has had some strong things to say against the practice, so the door will certainly be open if Jack Smith decides to open another front. However, as you suggest, the Bar is likely to take an even dimmer view of the practice.
ReplyDeleteBar associations are like medical boards - nobody wants to remove a license to steal. Police unions are similarly situated.
ReplyDeleteQue? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIE4UjBtx-o
The Trump supplied lawyer probably advised him like this, "It's a nice life you've had so far, too bad if it goes away. This is the best way to keep that life". They tell him that since the lawyer skis a lot his nickname is "Bone Breaker".
ReplyDeleteIts not like TOFF uses direct threats, other than your fired and
ReplyDeletelikely not paid if the results do not suit him.
Betting ones career on that is a bad bet.
Eck!