Wednesday, October 11, 2023

About Donald Trump's proposed "advice of counsel" defense ...

A lawyery question about a recent development with Former President Adolf Twitler's proposed legal defense ... apparently, Donald Trump is now openly bragging about invoking a defense called "advice of counsel," which means he is planning on blaming his lawyer(s) for giving him bad advice which he simply followed. However, as I read it, this defense has some unpleasant consequences for the lawyers involved.

Again, as I read it, if you try to pin the blame on your lawyers this way, you effectively waive lawyer-client privilege, since you need to establish that your lawyers actually gave you this advice, and that they did it in a legally convincing and defensible way. In other words, if you want to blame your lawyers for giving you really bad advice, you've pretty much allowed the other side access to all of those normally privileged communications.

Thoughts? I can't imagine any of those lawyers being thrilled with this idea.

P.S. Here is a nice overview of what Trump is thinking of unleashing on his own lawyers.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

His lawyers might not be thrilled with this possible development, but I'm assuming that at this point all they truly care about it is getting paid, given Trump's penchant of not paying contractors, venues that hosted Trump rallies, other lawyers, etc.

Anonymous said...

Lawyering for Trump results in any or all of the following: not being paid, disbarment, and indictment. It's a wonder he still manages to find one.

Mark Richard Francis said...

If he used that defense, he would no doubt next rant about the state "violating his attorney-client privilege."