Annals of De-lyingEditors’ Blog – Talking Points Memo / by Josh Marshall

Annals of De-lying

Editors’ Blog – Talking Points Memo / by Josh Marshall  / 1h

On Sondland’s turnabout, we get this update from TPM Reader EWF …

I’ve written you occasionally in the past. I’ve practiced law for 35 years, with a concentration on representing lawyers on matters of professional responsibility. I also teach legal ethics at … Sondland’s affidavit, in which he says he now “recalls” the quid pro quo regarding withholding aid, looks to me like it was born of one or both of two legal sources.

First, in many states a witness who has perjured himself is immune from prosecution if he corrects the lie later in the same proceeding. It may be that Sondland’s lawyers were concerned about a perjury charge and advised him to make the correction. Second, a lawyer who “knows” that his client has testified falsely has an ethical obligation to take “reasonable remedial measures” to set the record straight. It’s possible that happened here, and the affidavit is the result of their recommendation or exhortation to their client. Obviously, these two legal rules overlap and are not mutually exclusive. And, of course, this is speculative, but it seems very plausible to me.

I’m most of the way through reading the transcript of Sondland’s testimony. One thing that is clear is that more or less throughout he tries to finesse his way through denying things that to be obvious (direct quid pro quo, one that was clear much earlier than he allows, one that had to do with arms, et al.). But he’s just not that good at it. He wastes a lot of time being cute about points of language that don’t really matter and he’s just not convincing on points that matter.

What jumped out to me is that his lawyer, Don Luskin, repeatedly interrupts him at points where he seems to be denying things that are really obviously true. There’s a brief off the record chat and then a more candid Sondland comes back. It is hard not to infer that the counsel was something on the order of, “Don’t be cute. Tell the truth or something closer to it.”

Here’s one example on pages 79 and 80 of the transcript.

As you can see, the staff lawyer is pressing Sondland on what Rick Perry shared with him earlier in the yaer after Perry has basically laid it all out in an interview with the Journal. His denials are just not credible. Luskin interrupts and, as Sondland puts it, ‘clarifies’ the question he didn’t ‘understand’.

We can’t know exactly what was said here. But I’ll just note that simply reading the transcript suggests pretty strongly that Luskin knew Sondland was on shaky ground during the deposition itself and told him as much.