THE WORM TURNS
Slimeball’s att’y gives Rudy info on elex case
President Trump’s lawyers are using Mafia style legal tactics to complicate matters for special counsel Robert Mueller — and some experts say they may be violating the law.
Former organized crime prosecutor Rudy Giuliani, the President’s top man in the special counsel probe into Russian election interference, confirmed Wednesday he has been working with Paul Manafort’s legal team under something known as a joint defense agreement at the same time as the embattled ex-Trump campaign chairman has been cooperating with Mueller’s investigators.
As part of the contract, Giuliani said Manafort’s attorneys have briefed Trump on what his former campaign chief has told investigators as well as what he may have learned about the inner workings of Mueller’s investigation. “They share with me the things that pertain to our part of the case,” Giuliani told the Associated Press.
Ex-federal prosecutors say the communications between Manafort’s lawyers and Trump’s legal team could amount to obstruction of justice if Manafort’s side has disclosed confidential information.
Separately, legal experts said Trump’s lawyers may have committed witness tampering if they discussed a possible presidential pardon for Manafort in exchange for his feeding information to them. Giuliani has repeatedly said the President hasn’t ruled out pardoning his former campaign head.
The possible illegality of the exchanges comes down to whether there was a dubious intent.
“If the whole purpose was to undermine the Mueller investigation and that was proven in some way, then that would be a violation of law,” Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in Illinois, told the Daily News.
Such intent is hard to prove, Mariotti said, particularly since both sides would likely be hard pressed to testify against the other.
But experts agreed it’s now legally possible for Mueller to subpoena Giuliani or Manafort attorney Kevin Downing to dig into what has been divulged.
A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.
Beyond possible illegality, the defense agreement is ethically dubious and likely invalid, according to Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York who put scores of Cosa Nostra mobsters behind bars in the early 2000s.
“I saw this conduct in Mafia cases,” Rocah tweeted. “At a minimum, it’s unethical and not normal.”
Joint defense agreements can only exist between people who have common legal interests and are subjects of the same criminal investigation — like drug cartels and mob families.
Therefore, experts said the agreement between Trump and Manafort ceased to be valid once Manafort agreed to cooperate with the special counsel’s office, as his legal interest were by then no longer aligned with Trump, who is a subject of Mueller’s investigation.
The attorney-client privilege protections that were ensured by the agreement would thereby also have been annulled and Mueller could now try to demand testimony about the discussions.
“By reporting to Trump what Mueller was asking about, Manafort was hurting Mueller, not helping him, even though he agreed to assist Mueller under the agreement,” Mariotti said. “By any standard, what Manafort and his attorney did was deceptive and highly improper.”