Month: September 2022

A dark joke has begun circulating among lawyers following the many legal travails of former President Donald Trump: MAGA actually stands for “making attorneys get attorneys.”

Over six years and nine major investigations by Congress, the Justice Department and local prosecutors, as Trump has managed to avoid removal from the presidency and indictment, it has become clear that serving as one of his lawyers is a remarkably risky job — and one that can involve considerable legal exposure. Time after time, his attorneys have been asked to testify as witnesses to potential crimes — or evaluated as possible criminal conspirators themselves.

While the consequences his lawyers faced were extraordinary when Trump was in the White House, the dangers have only intensified since he left office and have become increasing acute in recent weeks, as the former president has come under scrutiny in two different Justice Department investigations and has been

For lawyers working with former President Donald Trump, legal risk is considered an expected part of the job: More than 40 attorneys who worked to overturn the 2020 election on his behalf have been hit with ethics complaints.

The New York Times reported legal experts joke MAGA now stands for “Making Attorneys Get Attorneys,” based on the reputational risk of working with Trump.

“There’s no way to adhere to your ethical integrity and keep your job,” Kimberly Wehle, a University of Baltimore law professor who closely tracked investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, told The New York Times of the dilemma Mr. Trump’s lawyers face: “There’s just no way to not step into a mess.”

The 65 Projectsa bipartisan effort to hold Trump-allied lawyers accountable for filing 65 lawsuits across swing states in an attempt to overturn legitimate 2020 election results,

What happens when three equity partners and a junior associate in a law firm walk into a conference room? They leave with a renewed appreciation for the office.

At least, that was the experience of Phil Appenzeller, CEO of Dallas-based firm Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr. That moment, which was before his firm mandated a companywide return, crystallized why he feels in-person work is still critical for lawyers, even in the era of work-from-home.

“One of our first-year lawyers was here, and one of my partners came down and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a problem. Can we go into this conference room?’” Appenzeller said. “For [a first-year associate]being able to sit and watch how we work through things, I think in person was much better than it would be if he was trying to watch it over Zoom or on the phone.”

Law firms are eager to return to the

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Ethics

‘Probably the worst day of my legal career,’ says lawyer for Infowars founder in testimony on mistaken revelations

By Debra Cassens Weiss

August 29, 2022, 11:20 am CDT

A lawyer for Infowars founder Alex Jones testified in a show-cause hearing last week that the release of confidential medical records to opposing counsel in a defamation trial was due to a wrong link provided by his administrative assistant.

Houston lawyer F. Andino Reynal was surprised during Jones’ defamation trial Aug. 3, when opposing counsel Mark Bankston revealed in court that Reynal had accidentally sent a link to a digital copy of

Corrections & Clarifications: Save America, a political organization established by former President Donald Trump, was incorrectly identified in an earlier version of the article.

Former conservative TV host Christina Bobb was not working directly for former President Donald Trump when she spread election conspiracies and raised funds for the Arizona “audit” in 2021.

But when federal agents descended on Mar-a-Lago in an Aug. 8 search for classified documents, Bobb confronted them as a senior lawyer on Trump’s legal team.

The search of Trump’s private Palm Beach residence and the recovery of top secret documents put a national spotlight on Bobb, a graduate of Arizona State University who has turned her advocacy for the former president into a career.

Bobb in June met with the Department of Justice’s chief of counterintelligence and signed a document affirming that all classified material in the former president’s possession had been returned to federal authorities,

Morgan Stanley has ordered an internal lawyer to shadow the unit entangled in a federal investigation into block trading, underscoring the gravity of the probe and the steps the lender is taking to beef up supervision.

The Wall Street bank has embedded one of its lawyers to sit on its US equity syndicate desk to supervise bankers and answer their legal questions, according to people briefed on the arrangement.

The decision to install the lawyer was made after Morgan Stanley placed Pawan Passi, head of the US equity syndicate desk, on leave last year, the people added.

It is the latest example of the fallout from the investigations by the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission into Morgan Stanley’s block trading business, which gathered momentum after the collapse last year of Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management.

Block trades are bulk sales of shares executed by an investment bank,

“I didn’t do anything wrong, I’ll tell you that,” he said. “I’ll go down there and tell them what they want to know.”

Ibrahim Reyes, a Florida-based attorney representing Wood, said the Fulton DA’s office contacted him last Friday seeking Wood’s cooperation. Reyes said Wednesday that Wood had not yet received a subpoena. The DA’s office declined to comment.

Wood’s name first surfaced publicly in connection with the grand jury investigation last week as part of Powell’s summons.

Her certificate of material witness cites comments Wood made during a December 2021 interview with CNBC as a reason why Powell’s testimony is essential to the investigation.

During that interview, Wood discussed meetings he held at his Lowcountry South Carolina plantation shortly after the 2020 election with Powell, Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Flynn and other prominent Trump supporters.

The meetings were held, Powell’s certificate alleges, “for the purpose of exploring