The stunning implications of the Manafort-Trump pipeline
By Harry Litman November 28 at 4:04 PM
Harry Litman teaches constitutional law at the University of California at San Diego. He has served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania and deputy assistant attorney general.
Following the implosion of Paul Manafort’s cooperation agreement with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III , a lawyer for President Trump casually announced that Manafort’s lawyers had been briefing Trump’s lawyers about his sessions with the Mueller team all along.
This revelation, far from routine, in fact is jaw-dropping — and it has significant legal and political implications.
First, and least, it represents another breach of the demolished cooperation agreement that Manafort entered into to avoid the expense and near-certain conviction in a second trial.
Some defense attorneys have asserted that it is common for cooperating witnesses to share information with other suspects (as we know the president is here) or putative defendants. Not so. Once a witness enters into a cooperation agreement with the government — which he does for the very valuable consideration of a potential reduction in sentence — he has agreed contractually to a full, no-holds-barred provision of information. The government in turn will frame questions and possibly share evidence with the witness, all of which reveal the government’s thinking. The universal understanding is that the witness will not run back and reveal the government’s case to potential suspects.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-manafort-witness-deal-implosion-is-a-very-big-deal/2018/11/28/cc242ab0-f338-11e8-80d0-f7e1948d55f4_story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Mueller's got the goods on everybody now!
