Dowd And Out
John Dowd is not just a bull in a china shop, he is a raging bull in a china shop. He blows things up. Still, he is a longtime, and big time, defense lawyer. He can be more than abrasive, but, unlike Jay Sekulow, he is a serious lawyer. And now he is gone.
From the New York Times:
The president’s lead lawyer for the special counsel investigation, John Dowd, resigned on Thursday, according to two people briefed on the matter, days after the president called for an end to the inquiry.
Mr. Dowd, who took over the president’s legal team last summer, had considered leaving several times in recent months and ultimately concluded that Mr. Trump was increasingly ignoring his advice, one of the people said. Under Mr. Dowd’s leadership, Mr. Trump’s lawyers had advised him to cooperate with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russia’s election interference and possible ties to Trump associates as well as whether the president obstructed the inquiry.
Mr. Dowd’s departure comes as the president has made clear he is seeking a more aggressive response to Mr. Mueller’s investigation. The president has in recent days begun publicly assailing Mr. Mueller, a shift in tone that appears to be born of Mr. Trump’s concern that the investigation is bearing down on him more directly. He has also privately insisted he should sit for an interview with the special counsel’s office, even though Mr. Dowd believed it was a bad idea.
Mr. Trump now is veering toward the combative approach supported by his longtime personal lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz, who stepped back last summer but was still in contact with the president occasionally over the past several months.
There are bulls in china shops, like Dowd, and then there is bullshit in the house. In this case, the White House. That would be Donald J. Trump.
When a client is so full of shit and uncontrollable that even John Dowd has had enough and gives up……then what?
What if that client is the President of the United States? Then what? And who is the real raging bull in the china shop? I always had a question as to how much Dowd was Trump’s “lead lawyer”. From the start.
But, if not Dowd, then who? Joe DiGenova?? Sekulow? Ty Cobb that was supposed to walk even before Dowd? Who do they got? And, you know, this question matters. Even “dream teams” need leaders. Johnnie Cochran could do that. Several others could too. But who does Trump have?
I think the recent McCabe/Sessions leak was probably from Chris Wray or Trump himself and will be used as an excuse to fire Sessions. Then, hopefully, they put Gowdy in at AG
Interesting. I had asked in another thread, what is the upshot of the McCabe/Sessions leak?
It seems muddled, to say the least, because you could reasonably argue it would give Trump the political cover to finally shit-can Sessions (“Sorry Senate Republicans, but he lied to me about something significant!”). But you can also argue that, because Trump did such a public victory lap over McCabe’s ouster, that this new leak may actually protect Sessions as AG.
My take is that it’s too unflattering to be a Trump leak. I’m open to the possibility that it’s someone out to embarrass Kelly, who is supposed to be able to stop things like that, or to try to frame someone who developed the memo. Supposedly things are getting ugly in the battle to replace Hope Hicks, so it may be fallout from that. Just guessing, though.
Dowd was pushing the needle toward Sessions killing the investigation. Ty Cobb was the more “compliant” one. It sounds like Dowd, or friends of Dowd, are attempting to rewrite history on his approach. I read another article where it said he couldn’t abide with the new (conspiracy) lawyer.
Eh, nobody writes for John Dowd, but John Dowd. He is a different cat.
Then he’s writing it himself, which makes it no more honest, right?
Nope, it does not. Dowd is a dick, but he is an authentic dick, and speaks for himself. To his credit, I have never known him to use cutouts.
Do you think he left the Three Envelopes for Joe DiGenova (with a ‘good luck’ note)?
http://wiki.c2.com/?ThreeEnvelopes
CNN G Borgia reporting that
1 Dowd is peeved by appointment of DiGenova, and it is not a question of disagreeing with the latters full on conspiracy theory, Dowd simply wants to be top dog on the team
2 that Dowd’s tweet over the weekend was at the urging of Trump, and Dowd has been hammered by Trump recently to be more proactive
3 Dowd was the principal point of contact with Mueller, and there is consternation in Trumps legal team over the manner in which Dowd has chosen to leave.
Fighting like rats in sacks is not a good look.
However the defence of Trump was always going to reflect the client : a curious blend of bullshit,batshit , low cunning, piled high on top of actual legal acumen.
Thanks for the clarification.
My only point of contention, which I take umbrage at, is do the poor rats REALLY deserve this comparison? I’ve been told that they have considerable intelligence.
The Don goes through people like shit through a goose. Trump’s problem is that no matter where he goes, or who his principal advisers of the moment are, the Don is still there. Perhaps because of that, the Don is expert at shifting blame. It’s how he keeps reality at bay. If Mueller gets too close, it must be the fault of one of his lawyers. It couldn’t possibly be owing to any of the Don’s behavior.
Trump’s preferred litigation strategy is not to cooperate. I don’t think he knows what that is. He prefers to bluster and threaten and to use co-opted newspapers or other media to damage his opponent’s reputation. Born with a lot of money, Trump has found that expensive process to work for him in the cozy world of NYC property development. It’s not likely to work well in the cozier world inside the Beltway.
Already, top defense lawyers have decided they don’t need the Don as a client. He lies and never stops. He doesn’t take advice. He refuses to pay his bills. He won’t shut up. The odds that he would commit perjury within two minutes of beginning his testimony are pretty good. He goes on the offensive because he thinks that’s how Roy Cohn taught him.
What Trump doesn’t realize is that for all his evil, Cohn was brilliant. He could negotiate and he often didn’t need to. He could count on return favors, be it from the head of the archdiocese in NYC or J. Edgar Hoover, a journalist, a socialite, a mayor, a judge or a mob kingpin. Trump can’t do any of that. He can only get into trouble, while his son-in-law gets him into more of it.
What happens next? Your guess is better than mine. But I would say the Don will break a lot of China as he rages against the dying of the light.
Very good points here, and I would also observe that narcissists like our Kaiser will eventually run into a situation that they cannot control, such as a criminal investigation by a special counsel (for Joe McCarthy it was the Army, Ike’s turf) and for which they cannot exert leverage like Cohn could. Watch the Zervos case, it not only is farther along than Daniels’ case but also has had a ruling in favor of proceeding based on precedent tied to the Clinton case (and Kellyanne’s hubby argued in favor of it). If that moves along it is deposition time, bwahahahaha.
The fact that it appears increasingly obvious that the current team of “best people” are moronic suck-ups means that when the hammers start falling the palace and its minions will be crushed. It couldn’t happen to a nicer crew.
So, how will the Kaiser distract from the news of what is coming? My 2 cents is it will be a war somewhere, and since Venezuela has oil and was singled out in a tweet for having unfair elections as well as being what appears to be an easy mark, the palace will intervene there. The Saudis have a competitor removed temporarily, the Kaiser gets a win, the palace can talk about the Monroe Doctrine, and there will be all of the attention directed to there instead of Mueller being fired. It’s like Reagan’s invasion of Grenada (which pissed HM the Queen off since she was not consulted as Grenada’s head of state), an expected easy win. Unfortunately, history frequently says otherwise, either during the fight or after peace is declared.
Too many people to feed in Venezuela. Too restive a population.
I don’t think it will be Venezuela.
Trade Wars may be enough. Or he will totally decompensate at some point.
That wasn’t a problem to ignore in Puerto Rico, with all of those Americans still without power and dying. But perhaps Venezuela isn’t the answer, but the one picked by the palace will need to have something of value, be in the tweeto-dog-house for crimes real and imagined (to get the base foaming at the mouth to DO SOMETHING) and not be too adept at protecting themselves (which rules our the DPRK, for now). I don’t think trade wars alone will be sufficient, because Faux News will need blood to sell the story line.
Trump bombing someone somewhere sounds extremely likely (since he can’t bomb Mueller, I hope). But I’m guessing he’s going to sell out South Korean security while embracing North Korea. He’ll be the star of that reality show and tweet how he should be the only serious candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. However, as always with Trump, this will only make things worse. But by the time ‘worse’ comes around, Mueller could be gone and Trump’s ensconsced in the White House till at least the end of his term. I’m not sure which option is worse, war or Trump the peacemaker. I guess war is worse, but damn. Fucking Trump.
Still, keep an eye on Venezuela as it has, reportedly, the world’s largest oil resource and Putin et alia are all about the fossil fuelishness, the only thing keeping Russia in rubles. The current situation is the end game of the oil game, a last ditch attempt to monetize all the oil and coal and natural gas before climate change becomes too obvious. No stranded assets for the kleptocrats.
The problem about an invasion is you become responsible for the population. I understand about the oil, but look how going after oil worked in Iraq! We’re still there – 15 years later.
I have no crystal ball. But JMHO
Puerto Rico is different. The people are leaving there! For here. (And my great concern all along has been that’s preferred, so wealthy speculators can buy up the island.)
Maggie & Mike say Kasowitz is under consideration for a return to the legal team, and has been on evening Executive Time speed dial.
As EW has said, DiGenova still hasn’t shown how he’s going to untangle the conflicts of interest over his wife’s representation of Clovis and Prince and their reported joint representation of Corallo. Kasowitz isn’t in quite the same situation, but having employed Corallo and been part of the events surrounding the AF1 statement, he’s
(Again, if there’s a strategy here, it’s getting people on the payroll who have intimate knowledge from their own roles or from advising witnesses who’ve already spoken to Mueller’s team or the grand jury. But maybe there’s not a strategy and the Idiot is just hiring people he likes or who look good playing lawyers on teevee.)
oops: meant to finish that second graf to say Kasowitz is wrapped up in the events under investgation.
Seriously, why not Pirro? She fits the tests of loyalty, limited competence and compromised ethical standards (after all her hubby went to prison for various irregularities). A no-brainer, which fits our Kaiser.
According to Gabe Sherman, Pirro and Dave Bossie recommended DiGenova. Sherman also suggests that Toensing herself is set to join the team.
I don’t see how that’s possible given her current clients, and I’d be glad for bmaz and the other professionals here to weigh in on the ethics of taking on a client when you have privileged information from representing witnesses in the investigation of that client.
It is interesting from your comment to see how some of the true RWNJs are sending other people in instead of going themselves. Maybe their agents pointed out how this is a career killer opportunity and that’s why they aren’t joining. Otherwise, why not?
I’m leaning toward the idea that Trump has 95% decided that the only court where he can fight is the court of public opinion. He’s going to do everything he can to cripple the Mueller investigation, fight delaying actions on the legal front with maximum craziness to keep his opponents bogged down, and rally the loyalists to ensure he has the 37 votes in the Senate to stave off removal from office.
I’m not sure that’s a winning strategy, but I definitely don’t think he would be in good shape fighting this conventionally. Right now Trump assumes no level of crazy will ever alienate his base, but at a point I think he’s at risk of losing powerful backers — especially Murdoch, but he may also suffer if people like the Kochs and Mercers decide to cash in their chips. Trump’s biggest internal risk is a rival — someone like Tom Cotton or Greg Abbott may become the beneficiary of a behind the scenes move if Trump becomes too toxic.
I know people have been arguing that any day Trump will lose his powerful backers and it still hasn’t happened, but I think it’s a mistake to assume he’s never going to hit a level of toxicity where, say, Rupert Murdoch issues the signal to Sean Hannity to say he can’t defend Trump any more.
Maybe the powerful backers are actually worried about losing Trump.
I.E., the turmoil is working to their benefit.
See stock market. Think insider trading.
Draining the swamp is work, hard work. :-)
I think it’s a mixed bag, to be honest. Someone like Murdoch makes his money from advertising, and a crappy market is bad for his business. I don’t think he’s in a good position to make a lot of money by engaging in a lot of market malarky.
Robert Mercer could very potentially be on the other side of the fence, though, and could potentially make a killing with inside information.
In other firing news: I heard a Tillerson speech; he was all choked up, and I thought he might cry at one point.
Trump’s history is that everybody lesser, and they’re all lesser as far as he’s concerned, is interchangeable. They’re fungible. Not my idea of how to do things, but apparently his.
What happens when this rat is cornered? How ugly does it get? Are there alternatives that make sense for the country and world?
Both Amazon and iBooks carry a version of ‘Trump’s Brain: An FBI Profile of Donald Trump’. $2.99 in both locations, and a very quick read. Not sure how much of the book is disinformation, but nothing in it surprised me, everything in it was, “narcissistic? check. appoints cronies? check. takes no advice? check. needs constant attention? check…” He is off the charts in terms of narcissism, but it’s how he mixes narcissism with other traits, and what David Frum calls a phenomenal ‘will to power’ that makes him so dangerous.
Assuming that Comey, McCabe, Mueller, and the rest of his team are used to dealing with criminals, as well as narcissists — and that they are all quite familiar with the FBI profile on The Donald — they could easily have predicted that The Donald would become increasingly unstable — I think EOH put it best in his/her observation that Trump blusters and denies constantly to keep reality at bay.
I fervently hope that the Stormy Daniels, et al, are part of a pincer movement to unhinge and destabilize The Donald: Mueller from one angle, Stormy et al from the rearguard. It’s impossible not to believe that Stormy’s got weird, puerile, perverted knowledge about Trump: his brain leading up to the ’60 Minutes’ airing of the Stormy interview this weekend must approximate an egg on a very hot skillet. I hope all the adults left in the WH are on full-time babysitting the next six days or so, because Trump’s going to be in bizarro territory.
One would need an M.D. in Psych, as well as a law degree, to manage The Donald. In the end, as a true narcissist, I doubt he’ll listen to much of anyone.
FWIW, I am admiring the hell out of Avenatti. He is outclassing Trump’s entire cabinet and legal teams, all on his own.
full-time babysitting
I’m sure this is why Dowd quit.
Some projects are never worth the money.
Normally, when given an impossible project, the response is: Cheap, Fast, Good – pick two.
With this impossible Trump project, Fast and Good are not available.
And as the lawyers have figured out, Cheap is not available either, because the lawyers, no matter how much they could earn, are not willing to piss away their reputation dealing
with Trump.
It’s a lose, lose, lose proposition.
I would love to hear what David Boies thinks about what is happening.
Gabriel Sherman @gabrielsherman
I’m picturing an array of colorful marbles strewn about the floor, which someone clearly lost.
I wonder if there will be a military parade.
Once the “splendid little war” is done (wherever it ends up being), there will be.
Liitle tanks rolling over marbles?
In a room full of kittens.
Betsy Woodruff@woodruffbets
[quote] NEW, w/@lachlan: Trump’s legal team has been using office space in ACLJ’s offices. ACLJ is suing the State Dept over Uranium One [“President Donald Trump’s legal team has done work out of the Capitol Hill offices of a conservative nonprofit group run by one of the president’s lawyers. [Sekulow]” […] As Sekulow represents the president in matters related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, ACLJ has also pursued litigation that, while not directly related to that investigation, aligns with efforts by the president and his allies to deflect from allegations that the Russian government worked to elect Trump in 2016. […] [end quote]
Just now:
Alex Ward@AlexWardVox I asked Ty Cobb, White House lawyer dealing with Mueller probe, who Trump’s lead personal lawyer is now. When I asked if it was Jay Sekulow, Cobb responded: “As far as I know.”
LOL.
Tomorow, a different story.
None of the staff or legal team have a fucking clue what will happen after next tweet.
There can be absolutely no question why Dowd bailed. None whatsoever.
“Who does Trump have?”
Trump: “I know more than … [pick a specialty]”
As we know, IANAL. But: Trump has TRUMP!
(Or could be Jack of all Trades “Kushner” – but I doubt that.)
That is exactly the right question at this point.
If Toensing herself is in talks to join Trump’s legal team, there’s either some incredibly shady stuff going on here, or a lot that we don’t know about. Or both.
No, Trump is going to start playing offense. There’s plenty of dirt for both sides, all of the double agents, and everyone on Twitter too! If we’re lucky, the whole Mexican standoff will end in a blaze of glory! It’s going to be sensational!
Charlie Pierce, always worth a read:
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19564300/trump-lawyer-dowd-quits/
I’ve always found it a bit incongruous in how Dowd was so sanctimonious & self righteous in the Pete Rose & other baseball investigations versus how he has responded as TrumpleThinSkin’s lead attorney
The Giamatti versus Rose affair is mostly all the public knows about Dowd, but, as is almost always the situation, that’s turned out more nuanced than it may have seemed at the time, and, IMHO, tells us something material about Dowd the attorney: i.e. Dickensian as he looks and acts, he actually tries to carve out a path that at least he thinks is the best one for his client.
Some here may recall that while the Giamattie-Rose affair was ongoing, and for a long time after, the baseball stats guru Bill James was dogged and assiduous in working thru the actual documents Dowd was working with and relied on in his ‘finding’ to the office of MLB Commissioner Bart Giamatti that Rose not only bet on MLB but on games in which Rose participated as a player or player-manager. James isn’t an attorney or betting expert, but IMO, as a trial attorney and also one who’s been involved in a few gaming cases, James got correct both
a. the available interpretations of the so-called “betting slips” and
b. the legal concept of guilt by circumstantial evidence, i.e. inference, or more particularly, available inferences from proven facts.
Except … it’s turned out since that Dowd was right on the broadest issue (albeit for wrong reasons): Rose WAS betting on MLB games, while he was a participant, and some number of those games were one in which Rose himself was a player or manager or both.
As all that has emerged over time, I’ve thought about who Dowd felt the client was in that case. Strictly speaking the client was ‘the truth’, but ultimate allegiance that largely illusive concept is something Dowd surely got past decades and decades ago (if indeed he ever bought into it). My own hypothesis is that Dowd saw the client as MLB, i.e. “baseball”, as embodied in Bart Giamatti, whose health was being destroyed by the case; and so Dowd chose to go down a bold path that he calculated, correctly, that Rose would prove unable to convince either the client or the court (of public opnion) that it didn’t exist.
As much as Dowd may appear a figure out of a Dickens novel, IMO he’s not stupid, he’s not an incompetent attorney (tho neither is he terribly impressive in any forensics sense), he is not a burn-out (probably – not completely, anyway), IMO he’s actually been working this case as if he could see a relatively safe path for his client, and is choosing to leave now, not because of any ego issue, but because he sees that path being closed by the client.
This particular client wants to receive legal advice on his own case in the same way he sees himself as having ‘succeeded’ over decades of receiving all manner of business-related advice, marketing, tax planning, accounting, etc., including legal: by having subordinate employees, consultants and even family duke it out for his attention and affections – not really all that far from structure of those notorious closing scenes in his stupid reality TV show.
I think Dowd thinks that not only is that not a structure he can work within, but that the client’s best interests, or at least Dowd’s strongly held view on those, are being permanently closed off by it.
I’ll go one step further: I think Dowd (like Cobb) fancies himself a believer in and supporter of the Rule of Law, and that what the client has chosen to go with now is utterly inconsistent with anything at all to do with that.
Heh heh… A suitably ruskie nickname!
So much so because Actual Russians refer to him that way, too.
Putting on my lawyer hat for a minute, I’ll say this: “I’m surprised Dowd stuck around this long.”
I have had difficult clients in the past. Clients who wouldn’t listen, who wouldn’t shut up, who wouldn’t let me to the work and just fucking sit back and be quiet while I did. Save one (a dear friend and colleague in unmerited ethical trouble), I fired them. I don’t need the heartache, the headache and the likelihood that a shithead client like that would, after disobeying my advice, wagging his tongue to all who would listen and so on, then turn around and sue me for malpractice after the case was lost because the client wouldn’t heed advice. And I can make my money elsewhere for the cases of non-shithead clients – it spends the same.
Of course, in the criminal defense context, the first defense to a malpractice suit is the obvious one: “the jury quite correctly found he was guilty as hell”. The second one – which gives defendants/malpractice plaintiffs a lot of cause, once it’s explained to them and gets through their thick heads – is that one contained in the lawyer ethics rule on confidentiality: “a lawyer is allowed to reveal otherwise-confidential information if it is needed in the lawyer’s own defense (against the client).”
So, The Donaldt ought to stuff a sock in it. He won’t. He’ll do what he does. And fuck himself in turn.
No big deal.
I congratulate Mr. Dowd on his new-found freedom from abuse.
Yep. Even an asshole likeTrump could never pursue this malpractice. And, as much as I loath Dowd, how would the client’s intransigence ever be separated from that of the lawyer? They truly deserved each other.
Agreed. Also, cash up front in amounts big enough to carry you through trial.
Ooops – typo alert.
“… gives plaintiffs a lot of cause…”.
Should read “…gives legal malpractice plaintiffs a lot of pause…”.
And, yes, I’ve done legal malpractice cases for both plaintiffs and defendants. You want to watch a lawyer go nuts? Sue him for malpractice. Worse than doctors making bad patients, lawyers make worse clients. Fer sher.
Cause or Pause.
I think both are valid points.
Just depends on whether there was actual malpractice or not, right?
Today:
Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the battle-tested Army officer tapped as President Trump’s national security adviser last year to stabilize a turbulent foreign policy operation, will resign and be replaced by John R. Bolton, a hard-line former United States ambassador to the United Nations, White House officials said Thursday.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/us/politics/hr-mcmaster-trump-bolton.html
Words can not express how horrific this development is.
You can’t say that you did not see it coming.
Yeah, it has been threatened all along. It’s weird that we were just talking about it here; his connections to Gatestone Institute, Dershowitz, Rebekka Mercer etc. https://lobelog.com/rebekah-mercer-joins-board-of-anti-muslim-think-tank/, then his NRA video pitch goes up on NPR, and presto-chango, there he is in his new position.
It’s incredibly eerie. I was thinking that perhaps someone was sending a clue about Bolton, the NRA, and the potential dark money from Russia. Then I settled on this release as, not from some patriot sending a clue, but from Trump Inc, sending a signal to the Kremlin, reminding them that their status is unchanged and that Bolton is copacetic with the ‘arrangements’. This became more clear to me after the announcement of the appointment, although I sincerely wish/hope I’m wrong.
No one has reported it recently, but Bolton was advocating for Israel to nuke Iran and “Iran’s nukes”. The scary part is that Gatestone Institute is a staunch supporter of Netanyahu, so this line of thinking may very well be approved and considered.
Background on Gatestone:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/gatestone_institute/
Gatestone produced the fake or altered videos, that kept hammering the “no-go zones” in Europe narrative. Meanwhile, Dershowitz fronted as a “constitutional expert” on TV, while helping Trump craft the Muslim ban at Maralago, and being an actual member of this Gatestone propaganda.
Remember Hoekstra?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8AwFc9hlf4
2009:
On Tape: Bolton Backs Israeli Nuke Strike on Iran?
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/10/tape-bolton-israel-should-nuke-iran/
Well, now you see me truly horrified indeed:-((((
I have quite a few very close friends who happen to live in South Korea.
Expecting a meeting Trump/KJU was scary enough while Tillerson ansd McMaster were in place, but now…
When will we all be allowed to just have a night of sound sleep, again?
It’s not just NK and SK. If we initiate war, this will blow up world-wide.
Heard someone on MSNBC, talking about women’s rights, say how honored she was to work under such a great man in the Bush White House.
re: who will we bomb. Does the country of choice need to be approved by Putin? I am having troubles deciding who Putin would like us to invade next. Any countries in Africa where Putin is jealous of China’s influence?