You could very well have an arrangment whereby Trump just pays $x amount a month or whatever, with any additional sums being billed for and paid for separately.
That’s not the problem as far as attorney ethics is concerned. As long as you’ve got the relevant agreements in place and are billing correctly and your accounting complies with the rules, that’s all fine.
The problem is with the idea that the lawyer under this retainer agreement:
(i) enters into negotiations over a non-disclosure agreement;
(ii) agrees a settlement figure;
(iii) draws up a non-disclosure agreement;
(iv) and pays out money on his client’s behalf
All without consulting with his client at any stage or even giving him a heads up about what’s happening.
Those are all precisely the sorts of things that lawyers are required to notify their clients of and obtain their instructions about.
We don’t magically ‘fix’ things. We’re not the shoemaker’s elves.
We act on the instructions of our client. We’re not supposed to go off and just decide that our client is going to pay out $130k (or even one cent) because we think that’s in his interests.
That’s the client’s decision. Not the lawyer’s.
In these circumstances an ethics violation is probably the least of Cohen’s worries since a violation of the campaign finance rules in this sort of amount could lead to jail time and/or a requirement to pay a civil penalty of up to twice the unlawful contribution amount.
So this avenue would keep Trump and the Trump campaign in the clear and keep Cohen out of jail with only the possibility of being disbarred to worry about. That he would be disbarred is not certain, he might get off, he might just be censured and/or fined, etc.
Either way, he’s clearly not dependent on his status as a lawyer to make money.
The ‘ploy’ I was thinking of in the post you quoted is superseded by other remarks made by Giuliani.
It’s still a possibilty but as you say it’s a bad one. The better theory is the “Cohen did it on his own without Trump knowing, then got reimbursed later” one.
As set out above I think that one may just sail narrowly through all of the campaign finance law rocks. No consultation or knowledge by anyone in the campaign = not a campaign contribution. So no requirement to report, no limits on payments, etc.
That is the modern world we live in.
As plenty of people have pointed out the PR battle is more important here than the legalities in any event (well possibly except for Cohen who is the only one facing any real consequences).
