Government

Donald Trump REALLY Needed To Stop Listening To Mike Lee's Terrible Legal Advice

Mike Lee is the wrongest lawyer in Washington.

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Mike Lee LF RFThe timeline of Mike Lee’s communications with the Trump White House ran a little like this: “(1) Lee offers a facially terrible idea, (2) White House agrees, (3) idea blows up in Trump’s face, (4) cycle repeats ad infinitum.”

After seeing the unhinged texts that Ginni Thomas sent to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, CNN upped the ante releasing text messages between Utah Senator Mike Lee and Meadows over the course of the 2020 election fallout.

While most of the coverage focuses on the disturbing extent of Lee’s efforts to subvert the democratic process by haranguing gerrymandered Republican state legislatures to toss the popular vote counts in their own states — but only for the presidential election, not their own! — the buried lede here really is Mike Lee’s absolutely atrocious legal advice.

Maybe turning the federal clerkship program into a patronage project for whichever FedSoc functionary does the best job “owning the libs” isn’t producing the best and brightest? Because former Supreme Court clerk Mike Lee had some… peculiar legal suggestions for Donald Trump.

Here are some choice selections from the texts reprinted by CNN. This is November 7:

From Mike Lee to Mark Meadows
Sydney Powell is saying that she needs to get in to see the president, but she’s being kept away from him. Apparently she has a strategy to keep things alive and put several states back in play. Can you help her get in?

From Mike Lee to Mark Meadows
It was at the president’s request that Sydney has been working on a strategy and has been trying to get in to see him. But she’s being kept out.

From Mike Lee to Mark Meadows
[Powell email address][Powell phone number] Sidney Powell

That he didn’t even bother to figure out that her name was “Sidney” before texting the Chief of Staff tells you everything you need to know about the due diligence Lee performed before flinging this live grenade into the Oval Office.

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We’ve since heard that Powell found herself on the outs because the serious lawyers in the White House — and we’re grading “serious” on a curve here — were always highly skeptical and openly revolted when Trump eventually acted on Mike Lee’s original advice and brought Powell in. That account is almost certainly exaggerated by sniveling White House attorneys attempting to burnish their reputations and return to polite society, but the nut is probably accurate.

And everyone except Mike Lee could figure it out. From November 9:

From Mike Lee to Mark Meadows
Sidney told us that the campaign lawyers who I do not know are not focused on this and are obstructing progress. I have no way of verifying or refuting that on my own, but I’ve found her to be a straight shooter. In any event, these actions need to be filed and announced in the next 48 hours or the public relations momentum we need to have behind it will start to dissipate.

“I’ve found her to be a straight shooter.” Legal advice for the pantheon.

November 19 — Mike Lee discovers his first oopsie:

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From Mike Lee to Mark Meadows
I’m worried about the Powell press conference.

From Mike Lee to Mark Meadows
The potential defamation liability for the president is significant here

From Mike Lee to Mark Meadows
For the campaign and for the president personally

From Mike Lee to Mark Meadows
Unless Powell can back up everything she said, which I kind of doubt she can

From Mark Meadows to Mike Lee
I agree. Very concerned

****

From Mike Lee to Mark Meadows
Unless Powell can immediately substantiate what she said today, the president should probably disassociate himself and refute any claims that can’t be substantiated

Oh, look! The natural and logical consequences of my actions!

Now, when viewing these texts out of context, it’s tempting to think November 19 must have been the first time Powell went off the rails and suggested that zombie Hugo Chávez used Dominion Voting Systems to commit massive voting fraud in states where it didn’t even operate… except it wasn’t!

As the eventual defamation lawsuit detailed, on November 13, Powell went on TV and claimed Dominion “was created to produce altered voting results in Venezuela for Hugo Chávez and then shipped internationally to manipulate votes for purchase in other countries.” On November 15, she said that family members of Democratic officials had bought Dominion and said she had video proof that she’d send out soon (she didn’t send it). The November 19 press conference was just icing on the wacky cake.

It’s hard to be offended on behalf of Mark Meadows, but note that there’s not even a flicker of apology from the guy who put the White House in contact with Powell in the first place. Lee’s like the anti-Cassandra: unable to predict even the most obvious future and unable to tell anyone about how wrong he was.

Don’t worry, though… Mikey’s got a new plan. Has Meadows learned his lesson? NOPE!

From November 23:

From Mike Lee to Mark Meadows
John Eastman has some really interesting research on this. The good news is is that Eastman is proposing an approach that unlike what Sidney Powell has propose could be examined very quickly.

While Lee persisted with his “let state legislators piss on their own voters” strategy, by January 3, he felt Trump just didn’t get it. After texting over a Washington Examiner story about Trump flogging the idea that the election could be overturned…:

From Mike Lee to Mark Meadows
Should I take this as a good sign that he gets it?

From Mark Meadows to Mike Lee
Well. Not as good as it appears

From Mike Lee to Mark Meadows
How so?

From Mark Meadows to Mike Lee
He thinks the legislatures have the power but that the Vp has power too

From Mike Lee to Mark Meadows
VP but not the House and Senate?

From Mark Meadows to Mike Lee
I am not sure

I am sure. By January 3, it was pretty clear that Trump thought Mike Pence could unilaterally overturn the election. And Trump came to this conclusion because John Eastman — the guy Mike Lee hyped up — wrote a memo claiming that it was all true.

Yet again, Lee seems blissfully unable to connect the dots between his explicit Eastman plan and this, ALSO failing to catch the Roadrunner with tragic consequences.

Obi-Wan Kenobi once asked, “Who’s the more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?” After watching the Powell suggestion explode, Meadows took Lee’s advice and put Trump onto John Eastman’s crackpottery. Lee deserves all the pointing and laughing he’ll get from these suggestions, but at what point was Mark Meadows going to decide Lee might just be a complete idiot?

Maybe Star Wars is the wrong point of reference for Meadows. So, as a former Republican president put it: “Fool me once, shame on… shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.”

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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