Special counsel Jack Smith’s team revealed the details of the employee’s about-face in a new filing.

A Trump employee who monitored security cameras at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate abruptly retracted his earlier grand jury testimony and implicated Trump and others in obstruction of justice just after switching from an attorney paid for by a Trump political action committee to a lawyer from the federal defender’s office in Washington, prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday.

  • thelastknowngod@lemm.ee
    55·
    1 year ago

    So the PAC was paying for his first lawyer… The whole point of the PAC system is that the candidate doesn’t control it, right? How does a PAC get held accountable for witness tampering?

    • Nicenightforawalk@kbin.social
      23·
      1 year ago

      Trump has been doing this from early on in his presidency with other lawyers and people close to him. His PAC has always been there to pay for all the legal fees and they share the same lawyers then pass on the info between each other to get their clients stories straight and locked in.

    • glockenspiel@programming.dev
      13·
      1 year ago

      Candidates actually can and do control PACs… up to a certain point. For example, the entire reason that Mike Huckabee keeps running for offices he knows he will never get past the very, very early primary stage, is because he can get his PAC funded and he can enrich himself and his family. Did you know that Mike Huckabee pays his children six figures a year for “roles” they hold in his PAC? That includes now-governor (barf) Sarah Huckabee-Sanders.

      Trump took it to the extreme, though. But it is completely normal and legal. It is why PACs were always a bullshit proposition. It is also why people hold off so long on officially declaring candidacy and actually filing the paperwork until the deadline because that starts the clock as to when they can no longer directly personally control PACs and directly profit off of them.

    • flipht@kbin.social
      3·
      1 year ago

      Unless your interests are the same.

      Another defendent? Probably never. But like a family member or friend that needs your name to not be dirt? Maybe.

    • NatakuNox@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      In a case involving criminal collusion, courts should require all defendants to have separate council. It’s obvious letting the most powerful member being prosecuted paying for the defense of the lessor defendants is a problem.

  • roguetrick@kbin.social
    20·
    1 year ago

    Lol and the Trump lawyer wants to exclude his testimony as a witness because it’s a conflict of interest since he was his former lawyer. What nonsense.