Looks like attorney-client privilege no longer exists between Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani
When a panel for the Washington DC Bar announced its recommendation earlier today that Rudy Giuliani be disbarred, it felt like a mere sideshow for a guy who’s busy doing proffer sessions with the DOJ and trying to keep himself out of prison. But it turns out one tidbit from the bar report could loom large for Jack Smith’s criminal probe into Giuliani and Trump.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman discovered that the bar report says that Donald Trump waived attorney-client privilege with Rudy Giuliani at some unknown point in the past. This raises all kinds of questions.
First, obviously, why would Trump waive attorney-client privilege with an attorney who knows so many of his dirty secrets? Did Giuliani force Trump into waiving it? Why would the DC bar know about this? Did Giuliani tell them about it during the course of its investigation of his activities? If so, did Giuliani also tell Jack Smith about this before or during his recent proffer session? Presumably Giuliani has some kind of documentation proving that Trump waived attorney-client privilege, because the bar would never have simply taken him at his word on this.
In any case, this opens up all kinds of avenues for Jack Smith. He likely already knows that Trump waived privilege with Giuliani and used it as a basis for getting Giuliani to reveal all kinds of things about Trump during the proffer session. And if Smith didn’t already know about it, he does now – meaning he can circle back and use it with Giuliani.
It’s not entirely clear why any of this is happening. Again, it would be idiotic for Trump to waive attorney-client privilege with his criminal co-conspirator attorney Giuliani. But keep in mind that Trump and Giuliani are both complete idiots who are pretty far down the road to senility, and they’ve both been making nonstop idiotic moves for a couple years now. So the notion that Trump would idiotically waive privilege with Giuliani fits with the pattern we’ve already been seeing.
