All Norms are broken
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Roger Stone received a commutation of his sentence. I’m not sure how that affects his ability to plead the fifth. You can’t argue against self-incrimination for something that you have already been sentenced and served your time for, right?
I’m sure that Giuliani would argue that privilege prevents him from any testimony.
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Florida should go after him, then. He essentially admitted guilt not just to Medicare fraud but also Medicaid fraud, which is a state-run program.
Privilege doesn’t cover doing crime with your client.
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While that is true, I’m not sure how it works out in practice. If they both robbed a liquor store together, they would both be convicted of robbery, but if you wanted to pin responsibility for the robbery on Trump because it was his idea, would you still be able to ask Giuliani, “Did Donald Trump ask you to rob the liquor store with him?”? That seems like it might be covered, since it would be Giuliani’s job as a lawyer to tell Trump whether that is a bad idea.
I would defer to the BBS lawyers on this, but even in your second example, privilege would be laughed out of court. If his client asks about committing a crime, a lawyer would advise against it. If he then sees his client proceed to commit that crime, he has a duty as an officer of the court to report it, even if it’s his client.
If there’s any evidence at all that they did the crime together, all bets are off.
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The pardon power is pretty broad, but even that isn’t likely to work. You can wipe the slate clean for past potential crimes without indictments thus quashing any investigations (Nixon, North, etc) but you can’t say, “ok you’re cool to commit crimes from this point forward”.
This isn’t Minority Report - you don’t charge someone for future crimes that might take place, only previous wrongdoing.
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I guess my expectation now is that to the degree that Trump himself remains in legal trouble, all of their tactics will be delay delay delay, until president Ivanka takes office. Even if Giuliani can’t claim privilege, I expect that it would take a very long time to show that.
Stone specifically wanted a commutation because he wanted to be a felon because he thinks of it as some kind of badge of honor. He still loses fifth amendment protection because of double jeopardy so he can’t claim self-incrimination since he was found guilty.
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Privilege doesn’t cover participation in crimes. The privilege attaches if T goes to G after he robbed the liquor store for advice on how to handle the legal consequences, but it doesn’t attach if G conspired with him go rob the store in the first place.
The problem is that getting around the privilege is a bit of a Catch-22 in a lot of cases, though–in order to see the conspiracy that waives the privilege, you often have to have access to the communication that they’re arguing is privileged.
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Would the judge overseeing the trial typically look at the potentially privileged communications to determine if it’s conspiracy or consultation?
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Yup, that’s what’s called “in camera” review, where the judge has the materials in chambers, reviews them, and then makes a decision about whether the privilege should attach or not (it’s used for a some other evidentiary stuff too). It’s tricky, though, because you have to be able to show enough to have the documents turned over in the first place–typically you need a wedge from a source definitely not covered by the privilege to get into the other communication, communication with 3rd parties being pretty common.
If the lawyer is smart and careful, it’s extremely difficult. Giuliani is neither, which is probably why they have ample avenues of showing that what they’re after is either non-privileged and/or he’s a co-conspirator.
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He was convicted of a very narrow and specific set of crimes about which he can no longer plead the 5th. For any other crimes he’s committed, he could still “take the 5th”. A pre-emptive blanket pardon would remove his 5th amendment rights regarding any other potential crimes he’s participated in.
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Well, we all knew this was coming. Very well telegraphed by the orange one, As I am across the pond, I’m not familiar with the implications of an American pardon but, to me, it smacks of yet another blatant abuse of power and is just Trumpy boy dishing out favours to his dubious and corrupt cronies. Is his word final or is there some way of putting it through the courts and appealing this gross misuse of the presidential position?
I really like this idea - no presidential pardons after Nov 1st. (unless re-elected) until January 21st of the next year. This would force folk like cheetolini to show their hand before voting. Don’t know if it would make any difference, but its worth a shot.
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Nope, there is no appealing his pardons. He has sole and ultimate authority there. Done is done.
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But now every single person he’s pardoned can be subpoenaed and forced to testify to any other crimes they may have witnessed or enabled.
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Especially since lying about it under oath would represent a new crime not covered by the pardon.
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Picking up where Rick Scott left off. And, like Scott, he gets away with it (now, with trumpito’s pardon.)
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“Why get a Criminal President when you can get a *CRIMINAL PRESIDENT?”
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If that was meant to be an allusion to the “criminal lawyer” line in Breaking Bad, it doesn’t work.
Just fyi.
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