Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Harvard Prof Goads Michael Avenatti Into Admitting He Broke Ethics Rules

Stormy Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti has staked his reputation on destroying Donald Trump.

Now he's destroyed himself from a legal position, publicly and on live TV. In an exchange on "Anderson Cooper" Friday night, Avenatti allowed esteemed Harvard University professor Alan Dershowitz to goad him into admitting he broke rule 4.2 of the American Bar Association.

Erson Cooper brought this up in the segment, and Dershowitz explained that the issue wasn't whether Avenatti was correct about his prediction of more tapes-the Washington Post has reported that there are 100 Michael Cohen tapes-but how he came by this knowledge.

Almost nothing Avenatti said was remotely relevant to the topic of the discussion, except for this: "This information on the Trump Tower meeting - that's not the best information Cohen has." To which both Cooper and Dershowitz responded: "How do you know that?".

This is significant for two reasons: It affirms that Avenatti understands the principle of rule 4.2, and it implies that there was communication between Avenatti and Cohen's legal counsel.

Dershowitz's response was to stick to whether Avenatti committed an ethical violation: "Are you saying specifically that you were given permission by Michael Cohen's lawyer to have that conversation with him in the restaurant? That's a question you should answer specifically, because if you weren't given permission to have that conversation with Michael Cohen you may have to answer to an ethics committee."

Avenatti then immediately damned himself: "Alan, Alan guess who gave me permission? Michael Cohen. He gave me permission."

http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/30/harvard-prof-goads-michael-avenatti-admitting-broke-legal-ethics-rules/ 

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