Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Cal.) made an extraordinary statement yesterday that suggests that lawyers representing President Donald Trump should be disbarred: “I don’t know how they can retain their lawyer status, in the comments that they’re making.” Just as I have been highly critical of President Donald Trump’s attacks on Adam Schiff and others, this is a truly outrageous suggestion. These lawyers are performing a key function in our constitutional system in not just representing an accused person but fulfilling a vital role in an impeachment trial. Because Pelosi disagrees with their legal arguments, she insinuates that they should not be licensed attorneys. It is precisely the type of ad hominem attack that Democrats criticize with the President.
Pelosi added that Trump “will not be acquitted” even if he is acquitted — entirely decoupling the Democratic position from either constitutional or ethical norms.
She is not the only person engaging in such low-grade, personal attacks. Harvard Law Professor Larry Tribe denounced Alan Dershowitz as a “charlatan” for his views. Dershowitz denounced another Harvard professor as a “coward” for his criticism.
These are good-faith disagreements over the scope and meaning of the constitutional standard. Moreover, the White House counsel has done an able job in responding to the House, including landing a couple of haymakers on the record. Both sides have had brilliant and not-so-brilliant moments. However, they have all conducted themselves will professionalism and civility for the most part.
Nevertheless, this scurrilous slander has become a favorite of even lawyers on the left. Two days before Pelosi’s comment, Mediaite published a column by lawyer and CNN opinion contributor Dean Obeidallah entitled “If Trump’s Legal Team Continues to Lie in the Senate Trial, They Should Be Disbarred.” The column states “Lawyers — and I am one — are officers of the court and we are held to a higher ethical standard than the average person.” He then lists “facts” that are contested by the White House.
Cipollone and Sekulow have been around long enough to know that not one client — not even the president — is worth destroying your career over. But if they continue down this path, they should be investigated for possible ethics violations. For example, he says
Sekulow served up another statement that does not line up with the facts. He told the Senate jurors that Ukrainian officials were not aware of the pause on military aid “until late August.” In reality, Defense Department official Laura Cooper testified in November as part of the impeachment inquiry that Ukraine officials “were asking about the delay of a U.S. military aid package to their country as early as July 25 — the same day as President Donald Trump’s call with Ukraine’s leader at the center of the House impeachment inquiry.”
However, the White House maintains that the rest of the testimony of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Laura Cooper showed only that an inquiry on the aide was conveyed to her from someone in Ukraine. The White House claims that she stated that she did not recall the details or reason for the query. That is called a disputed fact, not an unethical act.
The effort to attack lawyers for being lawyers in certainly in vogue. I recently wrote a column defending Dershowitz from attacks tied to his past representation of controversial figures. As I noted, Dershowitz was attacked defending unpopular individuals like O.J. Simpson and Jeffrey Epstein. That is what criminal defense attorneys do. They represent accused and often highly unpopular individuals. It is the rankest form of attack to suggest that a lawyer defending a client is somehow tainted by the crimes alleged in the case.
This attack is even more reckless and unfair. In this age of rage, advocates prefer to attack lawyers making the arguments than address the arguments themselves. It is all an attempt to assure readers that they do not have to seriously consider what they are saying.
Members of Congress have previously suggested disbarring Jay Sekulow.
I have on occasion called for bar actions against other lawyers, including former Trump counsel Michael Cohen and former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort. They committed both unethical and criminal acts. However, I would have defended both of these men if they faced disbarment based on their legal advocacy. The House Manager have been challenged for statements that are viewed as misleading or false, but it would be equally outrageous to call for the disbarment of Adam Schiff.
Rather than respond to the merits of their arguments, Pelosi elects to discredit their professional standing. Pelosi owes these attorneys an apology for this insulting and unwarranted comment.
Here is a great article by a Democrat, J H Kunstler. I can not link to it because the blog name will not pass the wordpress filter.
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Tales From The Crypt
What a fatal mistake, allowing Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) to make himself the face of the Democratic Party. They would have been better off with another scion of Hollywood: the Phantom of the Opera. This grubby seditionist has marched the party into a wilderness of deceit and knavery that taints them all, and when this grotesque impeachment episode is over, a new chapter of consequences will open that should leave the party for dead.
It’s hard to think of a more loathsome figure in US political history than Adam Schiff. General James Wilkinson? Senator Theodore Bilbo? Benjamin “Pitchfork” Tillman? Joseph McCarthy? Hillary Clinton? And that doesn’t count the mere rogues and rascals like Huey Long, Boss Tweed, and George Wallace. A universe of chaos lurks behind Mr. Schiff’s slick Tinseltown façade. The impeachment he led was crippled from the start with violations of process and errors of logic of exactly the kind that drives his party’s Woke hysteria with its assaults on free speech, its vicious “cancel” culture, its reckless race-hatred, its depraved Transsexual Reading Hours, and its neurotic obsession with Russian phantoms — a matrix of beliefs that would embarrass a conclave of medieval necromancers.
Of course, the impeachment was just the latest sortie in a three-year campaign to confound and conceal the arrant misdeeds of a network of government employees in the Departments of State and Justice, the FBI, the CIA, and the remnants Barack Obama’s White House, who are all connected and all liable for prosecution, not to mention characters in congress such as the co-seditionist Mark Warner (D-VA), who trafficked the Steele dossier around official Washington.
The “Whistleblower” in the current impeachment fiasco was a CIA agent and John Brennan protégé who had worked for Joe Biden both in the US and on trips to Ukraine when he was detailed to the Obama White House. Hunter Biden was known to be a dangerous abscess of grift years before Mr. Trump ever rode down that fabled golden escalator, and the “WB” was present for White House meetings with Ukrainian officials when embarrassing questions about Burisma and the Bidens came up. His supposed right to anonymity is fairytale and the time is not far off when he’ll have to answer for his deeds, whether it’s in a Senate committee or a grand jury.
The Intel Inspector General who ushered him into the spotlight, Michael Atkinson was chief counsel to the same DOJ officials who signed phony FISA warrants and who ramped up both the dishonest “Crossfire Hurricane” scam, and its two-year continuation as the Mueller Special Counsel investigation. All of this activity involved the same gang of top FBI officials, DOJ lawyers, and Lawfare intriguers. It has obviously been a broad attempt to overthrow a president by any means, including plenty of collusion with foreign governments. In a truly just society, this ring would be busted under federal RICO and conspiracy raps, and perhaps they will be.
You can see the next installment taking shape through the last stages of the impeachment fog. Both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader “Chuck” Schumer have declared that “acquittal is meaningless.” Somebody ought to inform them that the hole they want to keep digging is the Democratic Party’s grave. Can there be no Democrats who are nauseated by what has gone down in their name, who understand the damage that has been wreaked by their own leaders, who are sick of re-investing in falsehoods and perfidy?
I guess we’ll find out if the impeachment concludes as expected. If, by some fluke, it happens to proceed to witnesses, the Democrats will rue the day — or the weeks ensuing. They have one hole-card to play: the Joker, John Bolton. Bring him on, I say. The result will be exactly the sort of four-flush that is the specialty of their game. Then let the defense press the appearance of the “Whistleblower” and those connected to him. In the highest kind of court, which this is, is it possible that a defendant will not be allowed to face his accuser? I can’t see any possible legal grounds for that. And if, by some act of legal black magic he is excluded, there is enough to unpack between his confederates and Adam Schiff to not only unravel the premises of the impeachment case, but also pull out the key threads in the greater tapestry of sedition and official criminality dating back to before the election of 2016.
As to the election of 2020, the Democrats are trying like hell to set the stage for disputing and negating it. In fact, that has mostly been the hidden agenda behind this hot mess of an impeachment. They will at least attempt to litigate it into a dangerous state of irresolution. Wouldn’t that be grand? When that happens, Civil War Two begins in earnest.
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Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Brilliant summation!
Kunstler, a guy who was and very well might still be a Democrat. He said that.
Thank you for sharing that Squeek!
Squeeky…..thank you for posting that. Terrific!
Pelosi has lost it. Her actions and statements are not logical or thought out, she has troubles with her words when she speaks. I think Nancy needs to Retire. One issue that I am sure is bothering her is the radical left in her party, like AOC. The rest of the Dems and liberals, they to have lost it. Whatever Trump is for they are against?????? Same for the Media. Their hatred of Trump is so much they are blinded and say and do irrational things. This will not end, I suspect they will be back at impeachment in 30 days or less and continue on. If Trump gets reelected they will continue. They are not doing their jobs for the people and I think they are going to pay a heavy price come Nov. and throw the Dem’s out.
Thanks for your thoughtful analysis. It helps me understand. Truth has been my unifying principle throughout my life.
Here is an interesting take on this:
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See What Obama Brought You?
How does that sauce taste, Demonscats?
“For the sake of argument, one could assume everything attributable to John Bolton is accurate and still the House case would fall well below the standards to remove a president from office,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said in what his office says is his definitive impeachment statement.
Sen John Barrasso, a member of the GOP Senate leadership, added: “Even if everything in the book is true, it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment.”
And Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana said: “It’s not even getting close to getting something that’s impeachable.”
The implication of such an approach is that leaning on a foreign nation for dirt on a political opponent is not an abuse of power or impeachable offense and is also a perfectly permissible use of the authority that comes with the President’s office. That could have huge implications for the coming election and for the way future presidents use their power to further their political ends.
Who set this standard?
President Obama, and before him, President Clinton.
Oh, and then candidates Clinton/Gore, who took a huge amount of money from Chinese “bundlers”, which is explicitly illegal, and in fact a couple of people went to prison. But neither Clinton or Gore got even a slap on the wrist.
Nor did it stop when Bill Clinton left office. Hillary’s Senatorial campaign took in tens of thousands of dollars from a fugitive foreigner who has bankrolled multiple Democrat campaigns and failed to show up 15 years previous to be sentenced for fraud after pleading guilty to ripping off investors.
Then, of course, there’s the “Clinton Foundation” which had a huge amount of foreign money come in while Hillary was at State and running for President, but which dropped by a stunning amount after she lost. While that’s not proof that she was selling her office there’s little other interpretation available, just based on the facts.
And finally, there are the facts surrounding not only 2016 and Ukranian interference but the documented fact that the “ambassador” that Trump fired — oh, you know her — was blocking the issuance of Visas to people who sought to bring proof of said interference to Republican members of Congress after the election. This, by the way, is trivially provable through the documentary record (as is any other similar hideous nonsense that happened in the Embassy; they do keep records.)
Now CNN and the Demonscats are pissed off that the shoe is on the other foot.
Oh well.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=238016
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Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Many Democrats should be censured by the Congress for their lies to Congress, their threats to other Congressmembers, and their vitriolic rhetoric. Schiff and Nadler most recently; Pelosi and Schumer as well.
Democrats just project onto others what they themselves are.
– When they say a Republican will put a head on a pike, that’s because that’s what they do to their own Democrat members when they disagree. Waching Dems recant after Pelosi threatened them has been funny.
– When they say Republicans have colluded with foreign interference it’s because Democrats colluded with Ukraine, Christopher Steele and others to interfere in the 2016 election.
– When Democrats say Republicans are corrupt, it’s because Hunter, the Biden family, the Clintons, have corruptly enriched themselves on the public dime through quid pro quo for foreign entities.
– They say they are afraid of a president it’s because the Obama Administration used the entire weight of the FBI, CIA, FISA courts, Specia; Counsel Mueller etc to interfere in an election and election results.
– When they say the President lies, it’s because they have spent the last 3 years lieing openly about Russia and now Ukraine. ANd Obama and his staff lied about Syria, his flexibiltity with Putin, Benghazi reason, email servers, etc.
Jonathan Turley, you and your mostly-right-wing followers are wrong in criticizing Speaker Pelosi. Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly knowingly lied to the Senate and Chief Justice. “A lawyer shall not knowingly make a false statement of material fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer.” Rule of Professional Conduct 3.3.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/30/gop-senators-know-trumps-defense-is-based-lies-heres-proof/
Peter Davis is 100% correct, Mr. Turley, and I would have thought you would be aware that knowingly lying to a tribunal (e.g., the Senate at trial) that Republicans were not allowed in the Congressional SKIF when witnesses were being deposed, that he KNEW was a completely fabricated statement when full;y 1/2 of the Members present were GOP, is manifestly a violation of not only every State ethics rule, but also of the ABA Model Rules. He, and the other Trump apologists were absolutely lying through their teeth. As a 30-plus year Chair of a State Grievance Panel (not to mention a member of the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission), I have seen many cases of smaller lies in which lawyers have engaged than those Trump’s people put forward result, resulting in severe consequences.
You are basing your response on a WP opinion article? It is an opinion!
From the article: Near the top: “They’ve cited two facts — that Biden threatened to withhold loan guarantees from Ukraine to leverage that ouster and that Biden’s son Hunter sat on the board of Ukrainian company Burisma.
The author then spends virtually the entire article on the first fact, and only briefly mentions the second fact and doesn’t offer defense for it. A reasonable person can come to the conclusion that, at the very least, the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the reason for Biden’s employment was a matter of influence peddling.
From the Wall Street Journal:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-burisma-and-the-obama-administration-11574807939
Really, Schiff and Nadler have been lying since they’ve been in congress. Nadler says President Trump obstructed congress because he defied congressional subpoenas, and wanted the courts to rule on their validity. Nadler called it “executive privilege and other nonsense”. He got slapped back hard by Jay Sekulow, and deservedly so. Rights and privilege’s granted by “The Constitution of The United States of America” to all citizens are not nonsense. They are the backbone of our criminal justice system, and obummer used executive privilege too. The dumbasscRats have said they can’t wait for a court to rule on a declaration of executive privilege, it takes too long. Go ahead and keep voting for dumbasscRats, and keep quoting articles from the Washington Compost, you’re part of the problem if you believe either of them.
She’s a woman whose foundational intellect is quite ordinary. However, she was married to a man who was going places, she is the daughter of a man who taught her a thing or two about working political society, and she crossed paths with a husband-and-wife pair of operators who took her on as an apprentice. She knows how to navigate the politics of the 7th grade homeroom otherwise known as the ‘House Democratic Caucus’, but she doesn’t know much about law or about public policy, nor does she have much in the way of liberal education. (Adam Schiff knows some of these things. Regrettably, he’s a completely unscrupulous sociopath).
She’s called Palsi Pelosi for a reason, Professor. This quite mediocre woman is nearly 80 years old. She is as we speak just five days short of being the oldest person ever to occupy the post of Speaker of the House. Her husband is richer than Scrooge McDuck and she was vested for an agreeable pension a dozen years ago, but she persists as if she were indispensable. See Charles de Gaulle on indispensable men. The cemeteries are full of them.
She’s also a JFK girl.
Peelotsea needs to shut the ukFay up.
My only caveat to Turley’s article is the implication that both the prosecution and defense are just doing their jobs. The prosecution pursued a frivolous case based on what they somehow thought was going to help them politically — which it’s not going to do.
As a lawyer, Turley wants there to be some kind of legitimacy to this spectacle. There isn’t any.
Ms. Pelosi’s comments are typical of what the Trump haters are saying.
Frustrated in their coup, the Trump haters are lashing out with childish displays of temper.
No idea what they hope to accomplish other than irritating everyone – again, typical of a childish tantrum. It is all that they have left.
Americans will decide in November – and that is the way that it should be.
Why is the good professor surprised??? The Democrats have become a howling mob. They even have their own Brown-Shirt Brigades, called Antifa. They vote in lockstep and are even in favor of murdering babies who are minutes from emerging from their mommy’s tummy. Democrats encourage illegal immigration to stay in power and steal votes, with no regard to the horrible effects caused by all that cheap labor – all while disrespecting slaveholders of years ago for doing the same thing. The party is rotten and sick to the core. Now Warren says that she is going to let a 9 year-old trans girl pick one of her cabinet members.
Why would any sane, self-respecting white person vote for a Democrat???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Oh, so if our President is acquitted it does not matter because Pelosi says it doesn’t matter?????? I guess she thinks she is the Judge and Jury- only explanation I can think of
Nancy dazzled by the display of magnificent
Trump defence lawyers.
It was a kin to Professors debating students.
I don’t want to demean students.
Schiff flat-out lied on the floor of the House. He should be disbarred for this alone.
Schiff should go to prison.
Should we have expected anything different from our favorite Catholic girl, Nancy Pelosi, who cannot hate anyone? I am sure she prayed long and hard before she said the President’s attorneys should be disbarred. She is probably filing a complaint with the Bar as we are discussing this.
Have Faith! Uber Catholic Bill Barr, the greatest Attorney General ever, has a better, bigger, heavier Rosary than Nancy. They come in handy to wrap the knuckles of filthy mouths and bad attitudes Katholics like Nancy.
It saddens and hurts me…that the two young men whom l raised to believe in the Ten Commandments…have returned to me as two thieves…with filthy mouths and bad attitudes. Get out ! And don’t come back…until you’ve redeemed yourselves.
MrT, Please watch this video of what morning joe told his viewers this morning. Even you will be shocked.? https://www.facebook.com/1196904382/posts/10222523820583060/?d=n
Seriously, is she that clueless as to the legal system, or is this just political hyperbole? I would be embarrassed to make so many of the comments I have heard from Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi.
Professor Turley: You wrote “Dershowitz denounced another Harvard professor as a “coward” for his criticism.”
I can’t find that clip, but would love to see it.
From what I’ve seen of Dershowitz, I’d bet that he would never call another a coward if they advanced a logical argument against his own.
Unless I see otherwise, I presume that Dershowitz was calling the other a coward bec the other refused to engage in honest debate. And instead mischaracterized Alan’s argument – and thereby slandered him.
If that’s what happened, then Alan is doing exactly what you’re doing to criticize those who are using slander over reason.
Except Alan used one word – coward – where you used a dozen.
Thank you for your daily analysis. I appreciate your views.
Change your diaper when this is over, please.
Don:
Another childish comment.
It might feel good to say something puerile about diapers, but it adds nothing to the dialogue.
Try thinking or analysis; even off color wit would be better.
Answering her stupid remark gives credence to her stupid remark. Would’ve been better to just let it slide.
Thank you. I thought I might be considered too “stupid” to expect the law be applied equally to all.