To our internet lawyers, could Smartmatic and Dominion sue the Trump Campaign, which is still active and raising money?



(actual Trump campaign document points taken from legal filings)


Is not the Client (Trump Campaign) responsible for what the lawyers say on the clients behalf?

I know Trump would argue they were not his lawyers, if that happened but they went to court on behalf of his campaign, so that makes them his lawyers, right?

We have a new date!

Could make for some very interesting Thanksgiving Day dinners across America.



(was this noted already?)

I meant you do your own research like Qanon people say they do. Obviously I’m not implying you’re actually well informed or capable of even understanding the basics.
Right. This is exactly what Qanon people say. You have special knowledge and even though simply looking at the top google hits on this subject go against you, you’re actually right and other people have failed because they can’t make you change your mind.

Your positions on this are an identity for you in a way that it isn’t for the more sane/knowledgeable/reasonable crowd. I started on this tangent because you were wondering out loud why so few agree with you. Our side doesn’t have those existential questions because all the people that disagree with us are as cognitively limited as you.

I don't think so. Thanks! Always fun to have more riggie dates to look forward to.

In most or all states, there is an absolute privilege for statements made by lawyers in connection with a pending lawsuit. Such statements cant be the basis for a defamation suit.

Ahhh if i am reading that correctly add that then to the top of my list of 'grievances about the legal profession and why no profession should regulate itself and why gov't (filled with lawyers) will not do so either'.

As I am reading you (correct me if I am wrong) the lawyers could go in and make the most specious and dishonest claims on behalf of their client (i.e. Sydney Powell) and the client knowing it is wrong (have a memo to that effect) can just bite their tongue and allow it if they think the lies help their case and somehow that is protected?

I know that myself and my corporation can and will be held liable for the words and actions of any of our hired agents acting on our behalf. The best we can do is to try and indemnify ourselves such that the agent takes most of the hit, if we are jointly sued. But they can certainly sue us.

It has nothing to do with self-regulation. If you say a bunch of crazy **** in your complaint, your case certainly will be dismissed. If you lie to the court or make frivolous allegations, you may well get sanctioned. If you provoke the court enough, or if the behavior is habitual, you may get referred to the state bar association for disciplinary action. That disciplinary action could include suspension or revocation of your law license.

But you are not likely to be held liable in a defamation action.

Note that the privilege attaches only to statements made in connection with pending litigation. All of the Kraken's cases have been dismissed. If she makes defamatory statements about Dominion or whoever, she will be running the same risks as anyone else.

Look up "vexatious litigant".

You could probably do it once. But you couldn't keep doing it. And if you're a lawyer, you'd probably get disbarred, as Roc alluded.

This dude is not gonna have a good time in prison.

No, I don't count the press conference and I explained why. I don't think you realize how utterly stupid your argument is. It's almost like ok I am talking to someone in some group home somewhere who has just no grasp on anything, like suddenly I realize this person I've been dunking on has a fake leg and can't jump. The idea that Putin at a joint press conference answering that question in front of Trump carries actual information is probably the dumbest thing I have ever read in this forum and of which I am convinced the writer truly believes. And, buddy, I've read a lot of posts ITF.

The government never had access to the servers. That's why this all revolves around crowdstrike, who did examine the DNC servers and concluded there was no evidence Russia stole anything. Wikileaks, the only truthful organization in this whole thing, also said it wasn't the Russians. If the only people with access to the servers can't say it then neither can you. So stop lying.


I'm actually not promoting a conspiracy theory so much because the cooperative efforts between the intelligence agencies, political figures, and the media appear to be legal. There were some instances of overzealous intelligence agents, one of whom was convicted for doctoring emails. That's also why you have no evidence supporting the claims. That evidence would be faked and would be a crime. Instead the agencies just make statements which are misleading characterizations, often blatantly so, and the basis for these claims remain classified. Although, I have to say, it definitely should be illegal for anyone to carry on like Schiff did. He should be jailed for the rest of his life. But who knows whether or not lying your country into a crisis from a congressional seat is technically illegal. It probably isn't because if it was he wouldn't have had the balls to do it.

You are the one promoting a conspiracy theory. You remember? The one that fell apart in slow motion over 3 years?

He'll have a great time. He'll meet Jesus!

Crowdstrike’s Work with the DNC Setting the Record Straight

Quote:

Did CrowdStrike have proof that Russia hacked the DNC?

Yes, and this is also supported by the U.S. Intelligence community and independent Congressional reports.

Following a comprehensive investigation that CrowdStrike detailed publicly, the company concluded in May 2016 that two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries breached the DNC network.

To reference, CrowdStrike’s account of their DNC investigation, published on June 14, 2016, “CrowdStrike Services Inc., our Incident Response group, was called by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the formal governing body for the US Democratic Party, to respond to a suspected breach. We deployed our IR team and technology and immediately identified two sophisticated adversaries on the network – COZY BEAR and FANCY BEAR…. At DNC, COZY BEAR intrusion has been identified going back to summer of 2015, while FANCY BEAR separately breached the network in April 2016.”

This conclusion has most recently been supported by the Senate Intelligence Committee in April 2020 issuing a report [intelligence.senate.gov] validating the previous conclusions of the Intelligence community, published on January 6, 2017, that Russia was behind the DNC data breach.

The Senate report states on page 48:

“The Committee found that specific intelligence as well as open source assessments support the assessment that President Putin approved and directed aspects of this influence campaign.”

Furthermore, in his testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee, Shawn Henry stated the following with regards to CrowdStrike’s degree of confidence that the intrusion activity can be attributed to Russia, cited from page 24:

HENRY: We said that we had a high degree of confidence it was the Russian Government. And our analysts that looked at it and that had looked at these types of attacks before, many different types of attacks similar to this in different environments, certain tools that were used, certain methods by which they were moving in the environment,and looking at the types of data that was being targeted, that it was consistent with a nation-state adversary and associated with Russian intelligence.

To be fair CrowdStrike pretty much did what is standard. They can only examine data, mainly logs, to make an evaluation. I believe they were forthcoming with sharing their analysis with the FBI. I used to be a lot more skeptical of how this went down with the DNC servers. After working 3 years in cyber security I understand how this process works a lot better.

…

To catch you up, there have been some attempts (by the media and people ITT) to confound "hack" or "breach" with the theft of the DNC emails, the theft and release of which were the main complaint here. I, for one, welcome all relevant political information about those who are picked by oligarchs to rule us. I understand most people want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend the politicians are as good as their plastered smiles and don't want to know truths about them. But it so happens that Russia didn't do it, even if they had breached security they didn't take anything.

We tapped the phone of the German chancellery for a decade. Actions like that leave us having to tolerate some level of counter snooping. In this latest case with Russia their snooping was inconsequential wrt the stolen emails.

I'm sure he will, he'll get to act out all of his fantasies.

MyPillow guy needs to hire Trump's lawyers to sue his "Infomation Security Professionals" to recover the millions of dollars they scammed out of him.

I disagree on the self regulation point.

The 'ethics' for lawyers are way too loose and I am certain purposely so.

If you look how far out lawyers can go making clearly specious cases (how far out Rudy an Sydney went) before finally being snapped in for some type of Bar Review or Judges sanctions, it is ridiculous.

The types of statements "ambulance chasing lawyers" can make or threaten to try and elicit a settlement, even when they know the case is garbage but they know the publicity may make them settle... again garbage.

The ethical framework (the Bar Review) should take far greater authority in this area where items like that are often reviewed and if a lawyer is seen to be doing that they rack up points leading to disbarment.

But they won't and a massive part of that is that the 'good' lawyers on the defense side are the direct beneficiaries of having the 'bad', 'unethical' lawyers on the other side. it is entirely a win/win.

So mass legal reform in this area, which would greatly improve the citizens view of the profession of lawyering, will never be done as I think it would cut the field by 50% if not 66% in the litigation area.

And I am not hating on lawyers noting this. I just think there is such a massive and clear conflict of interest for them to apply the lightest of hands on their own and that is a problem.

Michael Avenatti should be the norm and not the exception in this area. And make no mistake, as everything Michael said and did with Nike could have been 'suggested' and 'finessed' by a better lawyer who would have got away with the threats. Michael was desperate and dumb and just made the quid pro quo threat too blatant as he was desperate for money to fix other problems. A lawyer with more patience and skill could have made that case based on the same allegations and avoided sanctions and jail.

That IS the problem. it should be the underlying ethics of the issue that determine if it is good or bad, right or wrong, and NOT the skill of the lawyer to veil that.

I understand that. I know some do (Michael Avanati) cross that line. But a skilled lawyer can easily not cross that line.

There are so many law firms in the US who specialize in what others refer to as harassment suits. You want to sue a company even with the most specious reasoning and they will consider the case.

The prime calculus often being not 'can we win in court' and instead 'what are the odds the corporation or their Insurance company will just settle this to make it go away'.

I know this first hand from the corporate world and dealing with them on both sides of that equation.

You will have lawyers carefully say 'this case may not be winnable in court but we know the Insurance company that corporation is using, and they tend to settle these things rather than play it out in court, if they estimate the cost of litigation and reputational damage will be more than settling'.

Those types of calculus happen all the time in law and they are all wrong imo. They should all be subject to automatic secondary review by a Bar who should 'examine the merits' and punish the 'meritless'.

As usual, your takes on the law are fairly hot and not very accurate. There are plenty of bad lawyers out there. There are some unethical lawyers out there.

But in general, clients almost always are more willing to push boundaries and lie more than their lawyers are. Make of that what you will.

Also, your assumption that there is a conflict of interest doesn't make much sense to me. The people who make disciplinary decisions don't benefit financially from applying a light hand to unethical lawyers.

Within the industry, ethical lawyers generally despise unethical lawyers and would love to see them run out of the profession, if for no other reason than schadenfreude.

LOL at carrying water for insurance companies on this issue. Initially denying coverage of meritorious property and casualty claims is most definitely is part of the insurance defense playbook. Insurance companies sometimes pursue this strategy because they know that policyholders often are anxious to avoid the time and cost of litigation.

And Lol at the belief hat insurance companies give flying ****s about publicity and settle cases because of it. Insurance companies aren't normally even named parties in the litigation and bear none of the adverse publicity suffered by their insureds.

I don't really want to pursue this as I don't want you to think I am attacking you personally nor your profession with a broad brush that somehow then smears you but I absolutely think my take is accurate here and I think the polling supports that.




I feel pretty comfortable in saying it is easy to identify the driving factors of why Lawyers, Business Exec's and CongressPersons, have fallen so low as to be alongside the Used CarSalesperson in terms of 'trust'.

And the main driver is their ability to self regulate or buy favorable regulation that creates a dichotomy of 'rules for thee but not for me'.

Average citizens see these groups are not held to account or the same standards that are imposed on them and that then destroys trust because you know they can 'get away with it'.


And I agree that often the clients are more willing to lie or be unethical to win. I believe that a proper lawyers code of ethics would be far more strict in ALLOWING them to make those specious arguments. Just as a lawyer cannot willing further a lie a client tells them, many will make it clear that the client SHOULD NOT tell them something that will then not allow them to make that defense. A wink and a nod that 'it can be our secret only if you don't say it out loud'.

Ethics committees should be able to pierce that veil, call a spade a spade and 'know' or 'expect' that the lawyer should have known better and refused (due to ethics) to make that specious allegation.

We can all laugh and roll our eyes if I google 'most ridiculous lawsuits' and we go through so many of the claims. We can CLEARLY see these suits were never intended to win and just intended to settle. That entire aspect of the law should be subject to intense scrutiny as it a conflict by design.

Every time a lawyer brings one of these specious suits to bear to make gobs of money there is a lawyer doing the 'good' work in defense making gobs of money on the other side.

Is there anyone who say this is not a 'conflict of interest' when it comes to legal profession as a whole greatly benefiting from the existence of vexatious lawsuits? And is the answer to then allow that same Profession to self regulate around it?

I have cited divorce law and how incredibly easy the fix should be to these often devastating and drawn out battles in court. But since in many of the most emotional cases the law firms on each side tend to carve up ~1/3rd of the estate while then each party (husband and wife) get ~ a third each there is not only no incentive to see it settle quickly and easily but quite the opposite, as we all know too many stories of couples who walk in to a lawyers office with an intent for an easy settlement and walk out ready for a drag em out fight.

Law exists on case history. Precedent. 99.9999% of everything that is going to be argued in most divorces has already been decided by prior precedent. These are almost never unique or new pleadings.

In no instance should a divorce go to Court first. It should always go to simple mediation (Retired lawyer or judge) who will examine all submissions (what is income, how many kids, how much assets prior to marriage versus after, etc) and then rule on a division of assets based on prior precedent.

Then if someone absolutely wants their day in Court (usually an angry emotion driven litigant) they can still force it to court. But the judge gets to consider the Mediation Report and if found to be fair, the person who forced it to court pays the court costs for BOTH from their part of the settlement funds.

In any rare case where the Arbiter did not think it fit precedent they could kick it to court with no additional penalty to the loser.

This of course would cost law firms immensely so we do not see it as the default and it should be.

Isn't there a saying something along the lines of--if you're not flirting with getting locked up yourself you're not representing/defending your client to the fullest?

Yours is an emotional response to my post so I do feel you are taking this personally.

I have absolutely been in the room and know other business owners have been similar and a KEY calculus of a lawyers recommendation to sue or not often includes how likely the party or their insurance is to settle versus forcing a costly fight.

Trump himself is known to almost always force costly litigation, counter suits, etc, and that has to be a prime consideration for anyone who goes after him.

It is not 'carrying water' to point out these truths simply because it is not always the case.

And a counter to my point of saying 'lawyers often do this' should not be 'ya well Insurance companies do bad things too and abuse the system' as I WOULD NOT deny that.

Both can be true.

Well I was not suggesting that so if it reads that way let me correct it.

The consideration on the Insurance Companies side is solely a cost/benefit analysis. What is the cost of fighting, risk of losing versus the cost of settling?

However additionally the cost the company will consider is often tied to reputational damage to the company.

Combined they often come to a pragmatic decision to settle despite feeling the suit would likely be winnable.

A good lawyer who specializes in this area is good in determining where that line will be drawn. Where they will settle versus where they will fight and playing it close to the 'settle' line.

We had law firms show us, as if a badge of honor for them, how often they got settlements without having to go to court.