How the Trump Indictments Destroy the Constitution

Perhaps the greatest danger emerging from the maniacal prosecutions against President Trump involves the left's all-out war against Trump's lawyers, which marks a broader constitutional threat to all Americans.

In the Mar-a-Lago documents prosecution, former Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran, "according to multiple sources," took copious notes of his conversation with Trump.  Then, going full-blown Judas Iscariot, he betrayed Trump by surrendering confidential notes to Jack Smith's power-hungry little prosecutors.  The New York Times, on June 11, wrote "Trump Indictment Shows Critical Evidence Came From One of His Own Lawyers," adding, "M. Evan Corcoran, who was hired to represent the former president after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, could be a key witness in the trial."

"Mr. Corcoran's notes," the Times continues, "first recorded into an iPhone and then transcribed on paper, essentially gave prosecutors a road map to building their case."

So Trump hires Corcoran, entrusting him with  confidential conversations.  But then Corcoran flips against Trump, becoming a "road map" for prosecutors in "building their case."

Smith's sixty-page superseding indictment reveals three unnamed former "Trump Attorneys,"  Trump Attorneys 1 (Corcoran), 2, and 3, whom Smith plans to rely on at trial.

Thus, Smith takes a hot blowtorch to the attorney-client privilege, pitting lawyers against clients.

As to the lawyers' backstabbing their client, somewhere beyond the gates of hell, Brutus, Fuchs, Alcibiades, the Rosenbergs, and Benedict Arnold, history's most notorious traitors, pop open the champagne, as the DOJ flips these turncoat-lawyer-clowns like pancakes on a scorching hot griddle.

But Smith didn't stop in Florida.

In his "January 6" D.C. indictment against Trump, Smith names five "unindicted co-conspirators," former Trump attorneys John Eastman,  Rudy Guiliani, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ attorney.

All five attorneys knew that Trump believed that the election was stolen.

By calling them "unindicted co-conspirators," Smith blasts a loud message through a bullhorn: "Shut your mouth, or I might charge you, too," pressuring these lawyers to plead the Fifth, to keep them off the stand in Trump's defense, which is Smith's plan.

Then Democrat-commie prosecutor Fani Willis indicts Giuliani, Eastman, Chesebro, Powell, Ray Smith, and Jenna Ellis, all attorneys who either represented or worked for Trump.

By indicting these lawyers, Willis will squeeze them as hard as possible to turn them against their client, Trump, thus securing her induction into the commie prosecutors hall of fame.

Following the Georgia indictments, President Trump said, "In the end, they're not coming after me.  They're coming after you — and I'm just standing in their way."

Just as he was correct when exposing the FBI for spying on his campaign, and exposing Hunter Biden for making millions on side deals with China at taxpayer expense, the president's analysis remains spot on.

As copycat Democrat prosecutors begin targeting conservatives across the nation, they add a new, dirty tactic to their destructive arsenal: attacking attorneys who represent conservatives and, through prosecutorial intimidation tactics, destroying the time-honored, sacrosanct American legal tradition of the attorney-client privilege.

Fast-forward a few years if they succeed.  As prosecutors increasingly prosecute defense counsel, to get them out of the way, Americans will be stripped of an effective legal defense against dirty prosecutors.  Full governmental power will be pitted against defenseless Americans.

A lawyer's oath to defend the Constitution includes, implicitly, a promise to preserve the attorney-client privilege, to keep client matters confidential.  The privilege is partly rooted in the 5th  Amendment right against self-incrimination and the 6th Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel.

Under the 6th Amendment, for a lawyer to be effective, a lawyer needs facts.  The attorney-client privilege allows lawyers to gather facts to defend a case while preserving the client's constitutional right against self-incrimination.

But some might ask, "If they're not guilty, what have they got to hide? Why not just talk to the police?

Here's why.

Some prosecutors are corrupt.  Jack Smith, anyone?  Fani Willis?  How about Alvin Bragg?

Some prosecutors will sacrifice truth to the political gods in exchange for self-aggrandizement and their thirst for power.

An "incriminating" statement — protected against disclosure by the 5th Amendment — could be an innocent statement, which dirty prosecutors, like Smith, will twist and use as a building block to convict the innocent.

For example, suppose you drive into the parking lot at your local bank and step from the car, wearing a light blue shirt and khaki pants.

Inside the bank, unbeknownst to you, an armed robber demands money at gunpoint.  The masked robber, coincidentally, wears your exact clothing combination, light blue and khaki, almost identical to your shirt and pants.  The robber robs the bank, runs, and disappears.  Someone sees you in the bank parking lot,  wearing the same colors, snaps a picture of you leaving your car, and gives it to the cops.

Now you're a criminal suspect, because you visited the bank, wearing the same color combination as the real robber.

So you call your lawyer.  "I didn't rob the bank," you tell him.  "I was there coincidentally, in the wrong place at the wrong time,  wearing the same color combination as the robber."

"Don't worry," your lawyer says.  "Your secret is safe with me."

But dirty prosecutors, obsessed with a conviction, don't care about your guilt or innocence.  They want their conviction.  So they threaten your attorney with "obstruction of justice" or "conspiracy" unless he coughs up confidential notes of your conversation, which he promised you would be confidential.  Your attorney, fearing prosecution, squeals like a stuck pig, revealing that you were at the bank at the time of the robbery.

Prosecutors can use your own admission, to your lawyer,  that you were at the bank in a prosecution against you, despite your innocence.

Thus, a statement can be incriminating even against an innocent accused.  And thus, the 5th Amendment and the attorney-client privilege come into play to protect Americans.

Trump's three Mar-a-Lago attorneys, and also Michael D. Cohen, Trump's greasy slick-talking, former New York lawyer,  squealed to protect their own hides.  But in violating the attorney-client privilege, they violated their constitutional duties to protect Trump's 6th Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel and the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination.

As totalitarian prosecutors berate Trump's constitutionally protected attorney-client privilege,  the slippery slope will lead to widespread treachery for us all.

Democrat prosecutors nationwide — little Jack Smith wannabes — mimicking copycat criminals like D.B. Cooper, a hijacking copycat, or Allen Stanford, a Ponzi scheme copycat — will adopt copycat prosecutorial tactics, like Smith and Willis, to attack lawyers guarding their clients' confidentiality, thus undermining the 5th and 6th Amendments.

Smith, by attacking Trump's lawyers, attacks constitutional protections established by our founding fathers.  Congress must defund Smith and his operations and, if necessary, even defund the DOJ.

The lunacy must stop.

Don Brown, a former U.S. Navy JAG officer, is the author of the book Travesty of Justice: The Shocking Prosecution of Lieutenant Clint Lorance and CALL SIGN EXTORTION 17: The Shootdown of SEAL Team Six and the author of 15 books on the United States military, including three national bestsellers.  He is one of four former JAG officers serving on the Lorance legal team.  Lorance was pardoned by President Trump in November 2019.  Brown is also a former military prosecutor and a former special assistant United States attorney.  He can be reached at donbrownbooks@gmail.com and on Twitter @donbrownbooks.

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