Trips of Truth!!
Trump’s ‘Co-Conspirators’ Are Already Starting to Turn on Each Other
“It is the ‘please don’t put me in jail, put that other guy in jail’ strategy,” says one attorney working in Trump’s legal orbit
ADAM RAWNSLEY AND ASAWIN SUEBSAENG
AUGUST 13, 2023 8:07PM EDT
Jack Smith’s latest indictment of Donald Trump isn’t yet two weeks old, but the alleged “co-conspirators” it identifies are already beginning to turn on each other — and some of them aren’t even being subtle about it.
A number of the ex-president’s chief lieutenants and alleged co-conspirators in the plot to overturn the election, such as conservative attorney John Eastman, have insisted the effort was perfectly legal and based on sound evidence. Others, however, have recently sought to distance themselves from the efforts of others, implicitly heaping the blame for any potential criminal conduct onto fellow participants in Trump’s attempted coup.
“It is the ‘please don’t put me in jail, put that other guy in jail’ strategy that was sure to come up at some point or another,” says one attorney working in Trump’s legal orbit.
Attorneys for veterans of Trump’s post-election activities like Rudy Giuliani and Kenneth Chesebro — both of whom have been identified as among the six unnamed “co-conspirators” in the most recent federal indictment of Trump — are now casting blame toward others on the campaign’s legal team or people close to the then-president. Giuliani and his lawyer are now openly trashing and blaming the “crackpot” alleged activities of Sidney Powell, another lawyer who worked on Trump’s post-election efforts. On top of that, Chesebro, the key architect of Trump’s fake-electors ploy, is now trying to downplay his involvement in the effort, spreading the possible blame and criminal exposure elsewhere.
And in recent weeks, Trump and his own lawyers have made abundantly clear that part of their legal defense will lean heavily on “advice of counsel” arguments — in other words, it will involve scapegoating attorneys who were only doing what Trump instructed them to do, or wanted them to do.
…. The feud between Giuliani and Sidney Powell — another attorney and alleged Trump co-conspirator — is among those probed by prosecutors, sources with knowledge of the situation say. Recent witnesses have offered up details on the behind-the-scenes animosity between the two attorneys. They’ve also told investigators their accounts of the former New York mayor’s private antics during the months following Election Day 2020.
Adding to the intra-MAGAland tensions overflowing into public view, Robert Costello, Giuliani’s lawyer, attempted to put as much space as possible between his client and some of Powell’s work to keep Trump in power, emphatically telling CNN: “Rudy Giuliani had nothing to do with this” and “you can’t attach Rudy Giuliani to Sidney Powell’s crackpot idea.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/donald-trump-jack-smith-coconspirators-rudy-giuliani-1234806292/