Ms W, seeing your twitter cw J Dean got me thinking on how I’d be feeling now were I in Lowell’s position.

There’s a certain ‘type’ of client defending attorneys come to know if they’ve acted for enough business tycoons, corporate CEOs, and, particularly in very large corporate settings (such as one sees in broadly diverse military hardware contractors e.g. Boeing, in mega-media concerns e.g. Time Warner, and in ubiquitous security tech outfits e.g. Cisco Systems), even senior division & department managers.
Whenever a member of this species speaks to someone who might be characterized as ‘beneath’ them (certainly their own employees, ‘enemies’, including attorneys for ‘enemies’, and, for reasons that I don’t get at all & in IMO is just nuts, their own attorneys), they tend not to look at that someone.
I’m not just talking about the cliche-ridden ‘look me in the eye’ stuff; they’ll actually HABITUALLY aim their faces away from whoever they’re talking with, like they’re speaking into some imagined point in spacetime.
The exceptions I’ve witnessed have arisen most often during witness examination in actual trial court settings. ‘Suddenly’ (It’s startling to observe the first few times.), they’ll be seen turning to the judge with something that looks awfully like an actual effort at establishing human contact with the judge (especially with if the judge is male), working too hard to ‘sell’ their own cred on topics such as, What I Then Understood, and What My Thinking Would Have Been At That Point.

It can take a lot of time, effort and patience on the attorney’s part, to establish some effective level of confidence and trust with such clients; we expect that. But, there’s no guarantee that such investment of time, effort & patience will pay off. Sometimes it doesn’t happen.
ESPECIALLY with this type of client, it often doesn’t happen.
Then the day comes where you have to acknowledge to yourelf that it’s likely not going to happen. That’s not a good feeling, and not a good day – especially if the professional relationship has gone on so long it’s no longer easy for the attorney to exit.

So … besides the problems with the June 9 meeting optics; problems with there being multiple witnesses’ versions of what went on in that; the security clearance problems; and the nepotism (along with the disturbing weirdness than more often than not tends to accompany nepotism) – there’s the fact that, after over a year since “Dad” took the oath of office, not only has Kushner had to repeatedly revise his financial disclosure, but attorney Lowell by now must be tiring of issuing comments to the effect that there’s likely more to come in that vein.

If it weren’t for Kushner being so bent (and assuming he had a sense of humor it appears he does not), he could form an umbrella holdings company and call it Limited Hangouts LLC.

Yes! (Meant as response to cfos’ last sentence above and comments before that. Rapier posted as I was writing.)

What is Ivanka doing (has done?) in Korea – where so many important world leaders are gathered – and can meet privately with each other? Possibly without that being noticed.

Astute understanding (above) of sociopathy. I’d add that there seems to be a genetic link also. Nurture and Nature combined. And there also seems to be a link between sociopathy and histrionic personality. (Trump has both. Jarod, I don’t know. Ivanka?)

I wish this were only a Greek Tragedy we were witnessing. Rather than stark reality. Sometimes I imagine a Greek Chorus in the background, chanting. Warning. Songs of woe and darkness and evil.

Politico’s Eliana Johnson is a tad credulous about Trump’s “punting” the decision concerning Jared’s security clearance to his COS, Gen. Kelly.  Trump did not “punt” or delegate the issue to Kelly.  He told him to do what Trump wants – keep Jared – and take the blame if anything the goes wrong.

He did give Kelly a fig leaf.  He said that he had confidence Kelly would do “what’s right for the country”.  He follow that with a smaller fig leaf, his complaint that the reason for the year-long delay in granting Kushner a permanent clearance was owing to the overly zealous, antiquated [FBI] process.  Trump skips over whether Jared’s problems are because the FBI finding troubling evidence that should preclude anyone from obtaining a top-level clearance.

Johnson recites the usual excuse for why Trump should be excused from knowing how to be president.  He is, “still a relative newcomer to politics,” and “has not fully understood the scope of his powers.”  She does admit that Trump knows, “he could solve Kushner’s clearance headache with the stroke of a pen,” but is afraid to do so because he might pay a political price for it.  That helps readers understand more of what’s in play.  Its effect is blunted by its being stuck in the middle of Johnson’s article and because ti doesn’t fit with her initial framing.

Trump is probably leery about granting an explicit waiver to Jared, because then he’d be pressed to do it for Ivanka, and for Don McGahn, and for forty odd other people who report to him directly (and dozens more who do not) and who still lack permanent clearances over a year into his administration (well beyond the norm).  That looks too much like work.

Marcy, you retweeted Zoe Tillman‘s thread about Manafort/Gates arraignment. [She threaded it better later in this tweet.]

The second tweet in that thread reads: “And there’s more: Per the newly unsealed docket entries in Virginia, we now know that the grand jury first indicted Manafort alone on Feb. 13”, linked to this doc. 

Doesn’t the stamp on that doc. read “Filed in open court Feb. 3” ?