It’s why Sharks won’t bite.

The late breaking news from yesterday was the admission by Kevin Downing (Manafort’s lawyer) and Rudy Giuliani (Trump’s lawyer) that they continued to participate in a Joint Defense Agreement (basically information sharing) for months after Manafort agreed to co-operate with the Mueller investigation.

Normally, while Prosecutors hate it, this is allowed because there is a convergence of interests between the principals who are alleged to have participated in the same crime. There are plenty of good and legitimate reasons to be represented by separate Counsel, among them disagreement about what legal strategies to pursue (see My Cousin Vinnie) or issues of capability or comfort (also My Cousin Vinnie). The Defense Attorneys (Court Officers after all) have an obligation to prevent the commission of any further crimes like Witness Tampering or Obstruction of Justice. These discussions take place under the protection of Lawyer/Client Privilege.

That does not apply in this case. The convergence of interests ceased the moment Manafort entered into his co-operation agreement. At that time he was legally contracted to provide information about the criminal activities of the other members of the conspiracy AND canceled any Joint Defense Agreement that may have been in place.

Now Giuliani brags that Manafort acted as a spy on the Mueller inquiry, feeding Mueller disinformation and lies while faithfully reporting back the subjects of his interviews and the specific questions asked. The purpose of this was to gauge the progress and direction of the investigation and possibly misdirect Mueller.

Well, that’s not just ethically wrong, it’s highly illegal- Obstruction of Justice on the part of the lawyers.

It’s a bonehead play that shreds Lawyer/Client Privilege, makes the Attorneys witnesses subject to subpoena for both documents and testimony, and exposes them to prosecution not only for Obstruction, Tampering, and Suborning Perjury but also Aiding and Abetting and Criminal Conspiracy.

Oh, and they can be Disbarred.

I know someone who’s worked with Rudy professionally and they are not at all surprised. He’s always been this stupid. There are other lawyers involved, Downing, Emmet Flood, who should know better.

The stunning implications of the Manafort-Trump pipeline
By Harry Litman, Washington Post
November 28, 2018

Following the implosion of Paul Manafort’s cooperation agreement with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a lawyer for President Trump casually announced that Manafort’s lawyers had been briefing Trump’s lawyers about his sessions with the Mueller team all along.

This revelation, far from routine, in fact, is jaw-dropping – and it has significant legal and political implications.

First, and least, it represents another breach of the demolished cooperation agreement that Manafort entered into to avoid the expense and near-certain conviction in a second trial.

Some defense attorneys have asserted that it is common for cooperating witnesses to share information with other suspects (as we know the president is here) or putative defendants. Not so. Once a witness enters into a cooperation agreement with the government – which he does for the very valuable consideration of a potential reduction in a sentence – he has agreed contractually to a full, no-holds-barred provision of information. The government in turn will frame questions and possibly share evidence with the witness, all of which reveal the government’s thinking. The universal understanding is that the witness will not run back and reveal the government’s case to potential suspects.

A witness is normally free to talk to a defense attorney if he chooses. A cooperator is not (and that holds whether it is expressly spelled out in the agreement).

Second, whatever Team Trump may assert, the conversations between some combination of Manafort, Trump and the lawyers for both of them were not privileged, and Mueller is entitled to know their contents.

Defendants are entitled to enter into privileged conversations with their own lawyers, and the government cannot force the attorney to reveal them. This is entirely proper and part of the constitutional guarantee of effective assistance of counsel. A corollary to this principle permits co-defendants and potential defendants to share certain information – essentially the same information that would be shielded by the attorney-client privilege for either of them – on the grounds that they have a “common interest.” This interest is generally set out in a joint defense agreement, or JDA, which confirms the umbrella of covered discussions.

Crucially, however, the JDA can operate only among parties who , in fact, have a common interest. A defendant cannot simply pick and choose people he wants to talk to and thereafter claim that a conversation is privileged. And when Manafort entered into the cooperation agreement with the government, he ceased to have a common interest with other defendants, including the president, as a matter of law. As former U.S. attorney Chuck Rosenberg put it, having signed with the Yankees, he couldn’t give scouting reports to the Red Sox.

Thus, Mueller is fully entitled to subpoena Manafort counsel Kevin Downing and whichever Trump counsel spoke with him (one trusts it wasn’t Emmet Flood, who is too savvy for such shenanigans) and force them to reveal every word of the discussions.
…
Finally, the open pipeline between cooperator Manafort and suspect Trump may have been not only extraordinary but also criminal. On Manafort and Downing’s end, there is a circumstantial case for obstruction of justice. What purpose other than an attempt to “influence, obstruct, or impede” the investigation of the president can be discerned from Manafort’s service as a double agent? And on the Trump side, the communications emit a strong scent of illegal witness tampering (and possibly obstruction as well).

So the story is Jerome Corsi (you remember him) was on a long airplane flight when he had a “Divine Intervention” (some would call it a revelation) that allowed him to correctly predict the nature of the DNC/Podesta emails and the timing of their release.

They didn’t believe it. Jeannie Rhee, one of the prosecutors, said, ‘Dr. Corsi, you are asking us to believe that on an extended international flight on with your wife for an anniversary, you had divine intervention and God inspired your mind and told you [Julian] Assange has Podesta’s emails, he’s going to dump them in October and they’ll be dumped in a serial fashion? Is that what you’re saying?’

I said, ‘I guess that’s about what I’m saying’.

What? Don’t you believe in Yahweh? I’m sure the Angel Moroni (can’t spell Moroni without “moron”) whispered directly in his ear and allowed him to heft the golden plates too.

I try not to tease Believers with their absurdity even though I’m an atheist because some delusions are harmless, but this is nothing except a dog whistle (heeere evil Harvey, bad dog) to Trump’s Evangelical White Male Base. It is, to put it mildly, highly unlikely.

There are other funny things in this interview with Ari Melber and I encourage you to watch it but what’s truly amazing is that Corsi gave it at all. The first thing that happens when you “lawyer up” is they tell you to shut your festering gob and stop digging.

The hole is deep enough.

Meta: I’m skipping Cartnoon because of space. Looks to be a busy day.- ek

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

President Johnson names commission to investigate JFK’s assassination; U.N. passes resolution calling for the British Mandate of Palestine to be partitioned; First flight over the South Pole; Natalie Wood, Cary Grant and George Harrison die.

He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.

Louisa May Alcott

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Not a good look. If only Trump cared.

GM layoffs and plant shutdowns suggest U.S. economy may be starting to slow — and dent Trump’s claim of an industrial renaissance
By David J. Lynch and Taylor Telford, Washington Post
November 26, 2018

General Motors said Monday it will close five factories and lay off nearly 15,000 workers in a move that shows the economy may be starting to slow and dents President Trump’s claim to be leading a renaissance for industrial America.
…
Coming just weeks after Republican candidates lost several congressional seats across the industrial Midwest, GM’s action carries a stark political warning for the president. If voters conclude that Trump failed to deliver on his promise to return lost jobs and prosperity to the region, his reelection hopes could be dealt a blow.

In 2016, he won four states with significant ties to the auto industry: Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. They provided nearly a quarter of the 270 electoral votes needed for victory.

Before leaving the White House Monday for a campaign rally in Mississippi, the president told reporters he had complained to GM chief executive Mary Barra about the shutdowns.

“I was very tough,” the president said. “I spoke with her when I heard they were closing. And I said: ‘You know, this country has done a lot for General Motors. You better get back in there soon. That’s Ohio, and you better get back in there soon.’”

Trump said he was pressing the company to replace lost production in the factories it plans to shutter with other models, citing the Lordstown plant, which makes the Chevy Cruze.

“Their car is not selling well. So they’ll put something else — I have no doubt that, in a not-too-distant future, they’ll put something else. They better put something else in,” he said.

Trump’s ire may be linked to his repeated promises to reverse the Rust Belt jobs hemorrhage that he said had emptied the region’s factories as a result of poorly designed trade policies.

“They’re all coming back. They’re all coming back. Don’t move, don’t sell your house,” the president said during a July 2017 visit to Youngstown, Ohio. “We’re going to fill up those factories or rip them down and build new ones.”

During an October 2016 campaign rally in Warren, Mich., site of one of the targeted transmission plants, Trump promised: “If I’m elected, you won’t lose one plant, you’ll have plants coming into this country, you’re going to have jobs again, you won’t lose one plant, I promise you that.”

Maybe that explains this-

Donald Trump’s Disapproval Rating Hits All-time High, Rising After Midterm Election, Poll Shows
By Tim Marcin, Newsweek
11/26/18

More Americans than ever dislike the job President Donald Trump is doing in the White House, a new poll indicated on Monday.

The latest survey from Gallup showed that Trump’s disapproval rating had shot up to 60 percent. That’s tied for his all-time high and the sharp 7 percentage point uptick from the week prior. Just before the midterm election, Trump’s disapproval stood at 54 percent, according to Gallup.

While Trump’s disapproval rate has risen, his approval rate has dropped. Only 38 percent of Americans approved of his job performance, according to the new poll from Gallup. That’s a 5 percentage point drop from the week prior, and approaches his all-time low of 35 percent.
…
The poll findings arrived on the heels of a midterm election that saw big successes for Democrats, who easily took back control of the House of Representatives. The Republican Party has hitched its wagon to Trump, but his popularity is struggling.

“This is now the party of Donald Trump. I read articles saying the Republican Party has merged with the Trump coalition—they have no choice. Trump voters own the Republican Party. That’s consolidated,” John McLaughlin, a pollster on Trump’s 2016 campaign, told Politico in a piece published on Friday. “The bad part is they haven’t broadened [his coalition]. They haven’t gotten his job approval over 50 percent, like Reagan. We haven’t done that.”

You may say that Gallup is an outlier but I would point out that the trend is down across the board and that this week’s results were obtained before the news of the GM layoffs and plant closures.

So yesterday was all Manafort all the time. Today may very well be Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi.

Jerome Corsi was a Soldier in the Stone Gang, senior enough to be trusted with a major continuing operation like disposing of stolen goods from a burglary but not a decision maker. Puzzled by my use of Mafia terms? The Trump Family is a Criminal Organization under the RICO definition. Before he started a career of Treason and Obstruction of Justice, Donald J. Trump had a lucrative (and highly illegal) Money Laundering operation, with some Bank Fraud (and just plain Fraud) on the side. Stone was the Caporegime of a dedicated Political Sabotage group that worked for a lot of Republican Criminals (Richard Nixon most notoriously).

Corsi has turned down a very generous offer from Robert Mueller to plead to a single count of lying to the FBI. It is both too late anyway (the reason Prosecutors can tell is they already know the facts) and exposes him to penalties that I don’t think he grasps. He’s an old guy (72), and conviction on even that single count without a lenient sentencing recommendation amounts to a life sentence.

But Wait! There’s More!

It’s not the only count. I’ll note this information was released by Corsi, not Mueller.

Stone’s efforts to seek WikiLeaks documents detailed in draft Mueller document
By Sara Murray and Katelyn Polantz, CNN
November 27, 2018

Draft court filings obtained by CNN outline significant insights into what special counsel Robert Mueller may know about Roger Stone’s efforts to seek documents from WikiLeaks in 2016.

Mueller’s office was preparing to tell a federal court that Stone pushed an associate to get documents from WikiLeaks — information that is now known to be stolen from the Democrats by Russian hackers — that could help the Trump campaign, according to a draft of a court filing and other documents shared with CNN by Stone associate and conservative author Jerome Corsi.

Corsi said he received the drafts, mostly dated this month, as part of his negotiations with Mueller’s team regarding a plea of making a false statement to federal investigators. According to Corsi and the documents he provided, prosecutors offered him a plea deal, which Corsi says he plans to reject because he doesn’t believe he knowingly lied.

In one of the draft court filings shared with CNN on Monday, the special counsel’s team outlined how Stone, who is only identified as Person 1, allegedly sought the information and emails from WikiLeaks using at least one person, Corsi, as a go-between. Corsi confirmed to CNN that Stone is Person 1.
…
In the draft court papers, prosecutors outline how Corsi allegedly lied three times to the FBI and special counsel’s office. He told them he rebuffed Stone when Stone asked him to reach out to Wikileaks; he denied that Stone asked him to involve another person in the effort; and he denied he shared information about what Wikileaks had.

In the summer of 2016, Stone allegedly asked Corsi to get in touch with WikiLeaks “about materials it possessed relevant to the presidential campaign that had not already been released,” according to the draft filing. “Get to [Assange],” Stone wrote on July 25, 2016, three days after Wikileaks dumped thousands of Democratic National Committee emails. According to the documents, Stone directed Corsi to get in touch with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, was blasting publicly the documents stolen in the Russian hack, and “get the pending [Wikileaks] emails.”

Corsi then passed that request on to Ted Malloch, a London-based consultant. Malloch said he spoke to the FBI this year and said was asked specifically if he had visited the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He had not, he said. Stone also said he has never met Assange.

Malloch did not respond to a request for comment on this report.

By August 2, 2016, Corsi was emailing Stone to predict that WikiLeaks had more document dumps in the works. Stone has said he spoke with Trump the following day, August 3.

“Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging,” Corsi wrote, according to the draft document. “Time to let more than [the Clinton Campaign chairman] to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton]. That appears to be the game hackers are now about. Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke — neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus, setting stage for Foundation debacle.”
…
Aside from Corsi, the draft documents don’t identify the players by name. Stone is referred to as “Person 1” by the prosecutors. CNN determined it was Stone through interviews and correspondence matching the emails described in the filings. CNN determined the “overseas individual” was Malloch based on previously released correspondence between Corsi, Stone and Malloch. Prior government statements as well as CNN’s reporting, context clues and correspondence between Stone and Corsi indicate that “Organization 1” in the filings is WikiLeaks.

Stone has confirmed the accuracy of the emails between him and Corsi that are revealed in the draft filings. He has also confirmed that Malloch was the individual in London with whom Corsi spoke.
…
As part of his proposed plea agreement, Corsi would have admitted to only one criminal charge with two components — lying to investigators and obstruction of justice before congressional or grand jury proceedings.

Corsi’s lawyer, David Gray, in a letter to prosecutors, said the radio host feared losing his securities license if he pleaded guilty to a criminal charge under seal and did not reveal it to regulators. Gray also said that Corsi would not be sentenced for “some time.”

In the draft agreement, the special counsel’s office does not seek for Corsi to cooperate extensively like it has with other defendants. However, prosecutors had made a deal with him two months earlier that he would speak with Mueller’s office and testify before the grand jury — and not lie during either situation.

So, 30 years let’s say. Corsi will be 102 before he has a bar and barbed wire free view. I don’t know who he expects to sympathise.

I’ll tell you what makes me despair, that these people are so committed to Mammon Worship or Fascism that they’re willing to accept these penalties. They can not be rehabilitated. There is no saving them.

But I’m persistent also.

Sometimes, they’re not funny.

Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr.

The Second Amendment is not for Black people.

The Second Amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Why was the term “free State” used, rather than “free Nation” or “free Country”? Actually, the term “free Country” appeared in the original version of the Second Amendment. However, the wording was changed to appease the slave states. Why? Was it because influential slaveholders wanted the Bill of Rights to sanction slave control militias? As H. M. Henry noted: “Slavery was not only an economic and industrial system … it was a gigantic police system.” Each southern police state was “kept safe”—at least for its white citizens—by armed militias. Unfortunately, if the free states wanted a Union, they would have to make a “deal with the Devil” in the form of terrible compromises with the slave states. The first terrible compromise was to allow the ghastly institution of slavery to be “legal” in the United States. A second terrible compromise can be found, ironically, in the Second Amendment. And that compromise is now allowing children to be gunned down by serial killers in schools like Virginia Tech University, Columbine High School, Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and even grade schools like Sandy Hook Elementary, thanks to the NRA and its gung-ho Second Amendment supporters.
…
Blacks outnumbered whites in many areas, which meant armed militias were required to “keep the peace.” Thus, Virginia’s delegates demanded that the Bill of Rights include one granting white citizens the right to bear arms and form state militias.

In her book Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas, Sally E. Haden explains that, with only a few exceptions such as judges, legislators and students, nearly every white man in Virginia and the Carolinas became a slave patroller between the ages 18 and 45, even physicians and ministers.

Without slave patrols, the southern police states would have collapsed. And because southerners knew how strongly many northerners opposed slavery, they were worried that if the federal government controlled the only militia, their slaves might be emancipated through military service.

Such possibilities troubled southern slaveholders like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Mason (the owner of more than 300 slaves) and Patrick Henry. Jefferson and Henry opposed slavery on principle, and yet opposed freeing slaves. They were definitely “conflicted.”

Some slaveholders were concerned that Article 1, Section 8 of the then-proposed Constitution, which gave the federal government the power to raise and supervise a militia, could result in a federal militia that absorbed the state militias and ended up freeing the slaves they had been keeping in chains. And there had been a precedent. Twelve years earlier, Lord Dunsmore had offered freedom to slaves who escaped and joined his forces with “Liberty to Slaves” stitched onto their jacket pocket flaps. Freed slaves had also served in General Washington’s army. So it was no idle fear that slaves might be emancipated through military service.

Thus, at the ratifying convention in Virginia in 1788, Henry said:

Let me here call your attention to that part [of the proposed Constitution] which gives the Congress power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States … By this, sir, you see that their control over our last and best defence is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither … this power being exclusively given to Congress. The power of appointing officers over men not disciplined or armed is ridiculous; so that this pretended little remains of power left to the states may, at the pleasure of Congress, be rendered nugatory.

Mason concurred:

The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practised in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless, by disarming them. Under various pretences, Congress may neglect to provide for arming and disciplining the militia; and the state governments cannot do it, for Congress has an exclusive right to arm them [under this proposed Constitution] …

Henry again:

If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress … Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia.

Henry again:

In this state, there are two hundred and thirty-six thousand blacks, and there are many in several other states. But there are few or none in the Northern States … May Congress not say, that every black man must fight? Did we not see a little of this last war? We were not so hard pushed as to make emancipation general; but acts of Assembly passed that every slave who would go to the army should be free.

Henry was obviously convinced that the power granted the federal government in the new Constitution could be used to strip the slave states of their slave control militias. He anticipated exactly what Abraham Lincoln would end up doing:

They will search that paper [the Constitution], and see if they have power of manumission. And have they not, sir? Have they not power to provide for the general defence and welfare? May they not think that these call for the abolition of slavery? May they not pronounce all slaves free, and will they not be warranted by that power? This is no ambiguous implication or logical deduction. The paper speaks to the point: they have the power in clear, unequivocal terms, and will clearly and certainly exercise it. This [slavery] is a local matter, and I can see no propriety in subjecting it to Congress.

Madison thought Henry was going overboard, replying:

I was struck with surprise, when I heard him express himself alarmed with respect to the emancipation of slaves … There is no power to warrant it, in that paper [the Constitution]. If there be, I know it not.

Henry, however, argued that southerner’s “property” [slaves] would be lost under the new Constitution, and the resulting slave uprisings would ruinous. His response to Madison was:

In this situation, I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquility gone.

So Madison changed his first draft to one that unambiguously declared that the southern states could maintain their militias.

Founders, am I right? And how about that Airplane food?

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Ferdinand Magellan reaches the Pacific Ocean; British prime minister Margaret Thatcher resigns; Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is beaten to death; The Grand Ole Opry makes its radio debut; Comedian Jon Stewart born.

If you don’t stick to your values when they’re being tested, they’re not values: they’re hobbies.

Jon Stewart

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Dog bites man. Film at 11.

Y’all stop being racist and I’ll stop talking about it.