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The trials and tribulations of the Trump crime spree on America continue to expose how corrupt our entire legal system has become. The week of November 13, 2023 has been occupied in part by a new parlor game resulting from the appearance of carefully edited snippets of video statements provided by Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis prior to their final guilty plea settlements with prosecutors. Release of this video didn't necessarily unearth anything new but did provide confirmation to remaining defense counsel of details clearly available to use against remaining defendants.

But who would have released such content? The only people in possession of it were the prosecutors and defense counsel for defendants involved with the same charges referenced in the statements.

Now the leaker has been identified. SURPRISE! It's one of the defense lawyers.

On November 15, 2023, Judge Scott McAfee was conducting a video call with at least twenty other parties regarding the merits of imposing an order to restrict exposure of information to the public at the request of the prosecutors to avoid these leaks and resulting controversy. As the judge took feedback from the various defense lawyers present, Jonathan Miller III, counsel for defendant Missy Hampton, announced he was the person that leaked the video of statements issued by Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis to the press.

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Judge, if I may. Miss Hampton does not believe that an order is necessary. This is one of the biggest cases the country has had and that transparency is very, very important. Since I have been working with her for the last two years, she has always said that she wanted to be 100 percent transparent. And that is why we are opposed to having any kind of regulations on our... what we can expose and what we cannot. With that in mind, we will adhere to any orders that the court does and will do so with diligence. But judge, in being transparent with the court, and to make sure that nobody else gets blamed for what happened, and so I can go to sleep well tonight, judge, I did release those videos to one outlet and in all candor, I need the court to know that.
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The hypocrisy and unprofessionalism of this lawyer's actions and statement are beyond previous imagination. But they are par for the course that we seem to be traversing for anything related to Trump. In large part it is because the nature of the crimes performed by people willing to do Trump's bidding are so extremely dumb and indefensible, there are very few competent / ethical lawyers willing to take the case.

The pool of lawyers willing to service the MAGA cult are so substandard in ethics and professionalism, they turn every interaction with the legal system into a clown show. This is, subliminally or explicitly, a key goal of the entire team. Just like the news media has been tainted by tagging everything "fake news" until people tire of hearing the term and ignore it, the public is tiring of the blatant disrespect show to the courts by anyone in the Trump sphere and, more importantly, the public is tiring of watching a legal system doing NOTHING to stop the behavior in its tracks, as would be done for ANY OTHER DEFENDANTS.

In a very real sense, the conduct of these wanna-be gonzo lawyers involved with these cases is CONTRIBUTING to the core goals of the Trump cult. The goals of delegitimizing normal functions of law making, law enforcement and judicial processes directly support the aims of a cult laser-focused on attempting to impose authoritarianism on everyone they dislike, which currently includes anyone who would keep them from re-obtaining power. In effect, these gonzo lawyers are co-conspirators in an ongoing larger crime against democracy and legitimate government.

This lawyer should be removed from this case and IMMEDIATELY disbarred for attempting to taint public perception of the court's integrity and for materially interfering with other potential witnesses in the case. There are likely criminal charges involved here as well but there is no way this lawyer should ever enter a court as a lawyer ever again.


WTH

This lawyer should be removed from this case and IMMEDIATELY disbarred for attempting to taint public perception of the court's integrity and for materially interfering with other potential witnesses in the case. There are likely criminal charges involved here as well but there is no way this lawyer should ever enter a court as a lawyer ever again.

Ummmm....I'm not so sure about that. I'm pretty sure that nothing he did was criminal. He probably didn't even violate and civil laws. It's entirely possible that he didn't even violate any bar rules or ethical requirements.

I mean, we know that there wasn't previously a protective order. The judge acknowledged that there wasn't much case law on the degree to which pre-trial discovery could be prohibited from being disseminated in totality. I don't ever go to court, so I don't know what the rules are about disclosing pre-trial discovery are. Googling hasn't been much help....but from what I've been able to piece together, I'm pretty sure that there isn't a general total prohibition on disclosing pre-trial evidence. That's why motions for a protective order exist - if you don't want defense counsel to go blabbing to the press about what's going on in the case, you have to ask the judge to stop them from doing so. It doesn't seem to just happen automatically because prosecutors might prefer it that way.

The prosecutors argued (correctly) that these specific disclosures run the risk of witness intimidation or jeopardizing the fair trial by tainting a jury pool with inadmissible evidence. Those are good arguments....but those are arguments in favor of asking the court to block the disclosure of specific categories of evidence through a protective order. They're not arguments that there already exists a rule, standard, obligation, or law against disclosing pre-trial evidence altogether.

We'll know more in the next couple of days - but reading the exchange between the judge and the lawyer, it would not shock me if the lawyer wasn't even punished by the judge in this case. Let alone having his ticket pulled.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/lawyer-admits-he-lea...

My understanding is that the need to protect information provided by prosecutors to defense counsel as part of discovery was already being debated between the judge, prosecutors and defense attorneys. Defense attorneys have the right to vigorously defend their client but not by creating an environment that could interfere with other witnesses or undermine the court's processes. The decision to leak these videos BEFORE the judge had a chance to hear formal arguments or make a decision seems to be a direct attempt to manipulate other witnesses and possibly help other clients by providing clarity on key elements in those statements. Other defendants could have GUESSED about the content but KNOWING is much more valuable when setting strategy.

The judge did proceed to impose a lock on these materials but at this point, damage has already been done. One defendant and counsel leaked information which can be used by supporters of the defendants in the larger public to exert additional pressure (public media, private offers, private threats) to tamper with witnesses. The lawyer involved here didn't RELEASE these video statements as part of transparency with his name on an accompanying statement describing his client's motives, he LEAKED them. Only two days later in court, when the judge expressed clear interest in identifying the leaker and preventing future leaks, did Miller publicly identify himself. If he and his client were so strongly in favor of TRANSPARENCY, leaking the videos make the court process look like a circus rather than a finely tuned machine. Any such confusion about "evidence" and "discovery" stemming from this stunt helps further erode public trust in this particular court and ALL courts.

In many of these situtations, judges appear to be bending over backwards in toleration of behavior no other defendant would attempt without immediately penalty. In this case, a request to protect this discovery information was expected by probably all parties and was in the works. Shame on Fani Willis and Judge McAffee for trying to proceed with some sense of respect for the defendants and giving them a wide berth. None of them deserve anything beyond the normal legal benefit of the doubt in any of these settings. Miller's actions appear to be a buzzer beater shot to publicize information he expected to be locked down so this "buzzer beater" shot may not be literal contempt of court, his conduct is completely contemptuous of the judge and the process.


WTH

My understanding is that the need to protect information provided by prosecutors to defense counsel as part of discovery was already being debated between the judge, prosecutors and defense attorneys.

That's entirely possible - and seems reasonable. But doing something inconsistent with what is "already being debated" among the parties is a far, far cry from breaking the criminal law. Or even violating the rules of your local bar. The lawyer isn't going to go to jail for doing something unless it's a crime....even if he's frontrunning an expected judge's order by doing it. He's very likely not going to be debarred, either. I'm not a litigator, so I don't know if there's some informal expectation that if you know what the judge is going to do on a requested order that you shouldn't do it, but I do know it's a really high standard to have your ticket pulled. If there isn't a Rule of Ethics on the matter, he might not even face so much as a reprimand.

Prosecutorial evidence isn't the same as classified information. It's not theirs. They have an obligation to share it with defense counsel, and my understanding is that defense counsel generally has no greater obligation to keep the prosecution's evidence secret than they do their own evidence. Defense counsel has an obligation not to do things that will result in the judge not being able to conduct a trial, so judge's have the power to impose some limits on what they can do and say in the media. But until the judge has done so, and unless there's some precedent or rule that says "thou shalt not," it's hard to see that anything really bad happens to this guy....

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