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Cairn Horn88

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As someone who worked with a per diem expense account vs a non per diem expense account, I can tell you I made a shit ton more money on the per diem. I’ll give you a for instance. With a per diem, I eat 2 meals a day, and I eat cheap. Let’s say the customer provides lunch during our workshop and then I go get subway or something for dinner. I spent $10 on food that day and I get to pocket $90 of the $100 per diem. Or, I have a much nicer meal on my non Per diem account for dinner. I don’t claim breakfast because I didn’t eat it and I don’t claim lunch because it was provided. So now I have $50 dinner and I walk home with $0 and the company saves $50. Of course I could throw in fake meals for less than $20 for breakfast and lunch and wind up with ~$40 cash, and the company still saves $10, but that, I agree, would be stealing. I picked $20 in this case because my current company requires receipts above $20. 

Anyway, usually it’s cheaper for the company not to offer a per diem. Though I loved those per diem trips when I was traveling with a sales person and they picked up all the food bills, then I got to pocket the whole per diem every day. Oh, and final note, the company’s I’ve worked for offered the per diem for daily expenses, airfare/mileage, ground transportation and hotels were all handled outside that. 
My clients pay the per diems. No messing with receipts makes it much easier.
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45 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:
20 hours ago, NameAlreadyInUse said:
As someone who worked with a per diem expense account vs a non per diem expense account, I can tell you I made a shit ton more money on the per diem. I’ll give you a for instance. With a per diem, I eat 2 meals a day, and I eat cheap. Let’s say the customer provides lunch during our workshop and then I go get subway or something for dinner. I spent $10 on food that day and I get to pocket $90 of the $100 per diem. Or, I have a much nicer meal on my non Per diem account for dinner. I don’t claim breakfast because I didn’t eat it and I don’t claim lunch because it was provided. So now I have $50 dinner and I walk home with $0 and the company saves $50. Of course I could throw in fake meals for less than $20 for breakfast and lunch and wind up with ~$40 cash, and the company still saves $10, but that, I agree, would be stealing. I picked $20 in this case because my current company requires receipts above $20. 

Anyway, usually it’s cheaper for the company not to offer a per diem. Though I loved those per diem trips when I was traveling with a sales person and they picked up all the food bills, then I got to pocket the whole per diem every day. Oh, and final note, the company’s I’ve worked for offered the per diem for daily expenses, airfare/mileage, ground transportation and hotels were all handled outside that. 

My clients pay the per diems. No messing with receipts makes it much easier.

 

 

 

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Gee, what a shame.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-lawyers-start-to-wonder-if-one-could-be-a-snitch

 

Quote

With three anticipated indictments, two ongoing court cases, and an ever-expanding cadre of lawyers, former President Donald Trump is at a critical juncture—and yet his legal advisers are starting to turn on each other.

According to five sources with direct knowledge of the situation, clashing personalities and the increasing outside threat of law enforcement has sown deep divisions that have only worsened in recent months. The internal bickering has already sparked one departure in recent weeks—and that could be just the beginning.

 

 

Quote

As Trump’s legal troubles keep growing—with criminal and civil investigations in New York City, Washington, and Atlanta—so too does the unwieldy band of attorneys who simply can’t get along.

The cast of characters includes an accused meddler who has Trump’s ear, a young attorney who lawyers on the team suggested is only there because the former president likes the way she looks, and a celebrity lawyer who’s increasingly viewed with disdain. Worst of all, now that federal investigators have turned the interrogation spotlight on some of Trump’s lawyers themselves, defense attorneys on the team seem to be questioning whether their colleagues may actually turn into snitches.

 

Quote

“There’s a lot of lawyers and a lot of jealousy,” said one person on Trump’s legal team, explaining that the sheer number of lawyers protecting a single man accused of so many crimes is without parallel.

Part of the concern over lawyers turning on each other is due to the fact that the Department of Justice already has one Trump attorney’s professional notes, which could position him as a future witness against his own client, and the DOJ has another lawyer who said too much in an unrelated case and has positioned herself as yet another potential witness against her client.

 

 

Spoiler

But much of the anger from Trump’s lawyers is directed at the former president’s right-hand man, Boris Epshteyn, who’s accused of running interference on certain legal advice from more experienced courtroom gladiators.

Epshteyn, who’s a lawyer himself, has risen through the ranks in Trumpworld over the years, first as an adviser for Trump’s 2016 campaign, then as a more senior adviser for 2020, and now part of Trump’s innermost circle for 2024.

Ephsteyn seems to have the former president’s supreme confidence, with what’s described as a final say on all matters related to public relations and legal issues. But there’s snickering in the shadows. Several sources ridiculed the way Ephsteyn refers to himself as “in-house counsel”—normally a term for a company’s corporate attorney—noting how it echoes the way John Gotti’s mafia lawyer used to describe his services for the infamous Gambino crime family.

Epshteyn’s meddling has particularly affected the lawyers working to defend Trump from Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith and his investigation into whether the former president broke the law when he took top secret documents on his way out of the White House in January 2021 and hoarded them at Mar-a-Lago.

“Boris pissed off all the Florida lawyers. People are dropping like flies. Everybody hates him. He’s a toxic loser. He’s a complete psycho,” said a second person, who could barely contain their anger while discussing the matter. “He’s got daddy issues, and Trump is his daddy.”

The infighting came to a head recently, sparking the departure earlier this month of Tim Parlatore, one of the lawyers in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

Parlatore’s sudden departure from Trump’s legal team came after a never-reported meeting last month at Mar-a-Lago, where several lawyers threatened to leave. According to two sources who described it as “an intervention,” the lawyers handling the case put forward an ultimatum: either Epshteyn goes or they do.

Four sources described how Epshteyn would at times stand guard between Trump and his own defense lawyers, demanding that all communication flow through him. One of these sources noted that Parlatore’s first ever one-on-one meeting with his own client was when the defense lawyer recently submitted his resignation.

A fifth person who regularly works on legal matters countered the description of Epshteyn as an obstructionist, noting that Trump’s lawyers still have a direct channel to the former president when necessary. But this person acknowledged that Epshteyn plays a pivotal role in screening major issues that fly Trump’s way, much like a public official’s highly defensive chief of staff.

“He does help arrange things. He tries to coordinate. But everybody has Trump’s phone number, and he picks up the phone. And he calls you directly when he feels like it,” this person said.

“Some people don’t like Boris, but most of us are used to having a client to ourselves,” this person continued. “We don’t have other people involved. When there’s all these lawyers, there’s going to be conflict. Different people, different ideas. People feel like Boris is the one who’s deciding things, but it’s not Boris making decisions. I guarantee you that’s Trump not wanting something.”

This source suggested that, at this stage—with three different criminal investigations closing in and multiple trials scheduled to interrupt the election season—it’s inevitable that high-powered lawyers fully capable of representing someone like a former American president would chide at being questioned by someone like Epshteyn. Another person described him as “a really super-smart guy” who still manages to be “obnoxious, vociferous, and bombastic” because “he has a law license.”

“It doesn’t mean he’s really a lawyer,” this person said.

The closest anyone on the team has come to publicly hinting at in-fighting was Parlatore in a CNN appearance last week, in which he blamed Epshteyn for doing “everything he could to try to block us, to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the president.”

But as another Trump lawyer, Alina Habba, said days later on that same TV news network: “You have type A personalities. We’re all lawyers, and not everybody’s always going to get along.”

Epshteyn declined to comment on the record, but a Trump 2024 campaign spokesman moved to create distance between the remaining lawyers and the departing counsel.

“Mr. Parlatore is no longer a member of the legal team. His statements regarding current members of the legal team are unfounded and categorically false,” Steven Cheung told The Daily Beast.

Then there’s the 33-year-old Lindsey Halligan, a relatively inexperienced lawyer who suddenly appeared in Trump’s orbit sometime last summer as a vocal advocate on the right-wing Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. She was at Mar-a-Lago during the FBI’s search there in August, quickly became involved in Trump’s bumbling lawsuit in October against CNN for comparing Trump to Hitler, and has since been generally involved in his defense against the feds.

Fellow attorneys advising Trump have seriously questioned why she’s on the team, given that the most notable case she worked on since graduating from law school in 2013 appears to have been second-chair to a more senior lawyer defending an insurance company at a two-day trial against three Miami homeowners with damaged roofs. Even in that case, a judge wouldn’t award her attorney’s fees because he ruled that her team screwed up and didn’t act “in good faith.”

“It waters down the honor to represent a president. It really does, when you think about it,” one of her colleagues told The Daily Beast.

Two current members of Trump’s defense speculated that Trump only keeps Halligan around because he likes to be surrounded by attractive people.

Halligan did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But another colleague came to her defense.

“With a new person coming in, people are looking to undercut her. She's a young, attractive woman, and people can be pretty sexist,” this person said, noting that such speculation about her hiring was “an easy way to undercut a woman attorney.”

Trump’s mounting legal problems have only added to the general anxiety afflicting his attorneys.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which indicted Trump in March for faking business records, is about to dump thousands of documents of evidence on defense lawyers Todd Blanche, Susan Necheles, and Joe Tacopina—who aren’t allowed to freely share those documents with the former president. They may even have to fight Trump to prevent him from stupidly posting sensitive details on social media.

The DA’s prosecutors are already trying to fracture Trump’s legal team by attempting to disqualify Tacopina and make him seem like a weak link, because he has a tenuous connection to a key witness in the case, the porn star Stormy Daniels whose hush money payment Trump tried to hide while running for president back in 2016.

Meanwhile, defense attorneys Alina Habba and Christopher Kise are gearing up for a civil trial in October against the New York Attorney General, who seeks to bleed the Trump Organization dry and destroy Trump’s ability to do conduct business in the financial capital of the world by holding him personally liable for bank and insurance fraud.

In Georgia, the defense lawyers Drew Findling, Melissa Goldberg, and Jennifer L. Little are preparing for the Fulton County District Attorney to indict Trump in July or August over the way he intimidated the state’s top elections official in 2021 while trying to overturn his loss there—a recorded phone call where he was advised by yet other lawyers he trusted.

And an entirely different team of lawyers split up between the nation’s capital and his oceanside Florida estate—former federal prosecutors M. Evan Corcoran, John P. Rowley, and Jim Trusty up north and Halligan down south—are gearing up for two different fights with the Department of Justice.

Meanwhile, there’s growing resentment against Habba and Tacopina among the some lawyers over the way they handled Trump’s recent rape trial against the journalist E. Jean Carroll. The former president didn’t bother showing up to testify, his attorneys presented no case, and the jury swiftly concluded he committed sexual abuse. One source commended the duo for putting up a fight while dealing with a no-bullshit federal judge and a client who wouldn’t stop digging himself into a hole. But others ripped Habba for failing to get better rulings from the federal judge before the trial and tore into Tacopina over his brutish performance in court.

“She quickly demonstrated herself to have a total lack of understanding, and he totally screwed that case up. That was a winnable case if he presented a defense,” one source said.

While Trump’s sprawling legal battalion occasionally comes together for massive meetings about the overall pitiful state of affairs, each case team operates in its own lane—raising suspicions that some teams are completely under-equipped and could cause others to trip up. Trump has so many simultaneous criminal investigations that they have to coordinate to not double book potential appearances in court—or trials. And they all have to bear in mind that he’s actively campaigning for president of the United States.

But what’s really driving the deepest distrust is the way Smith’s investigators have started turning up the heat on Trump’s own lawyers, driving wedges between the counselors and their client.

It happened when a federal judge, citing the existence of a possible crime, unilaterally and speedily handed prosecutors Corcoran’s professional notes—an odd and highly questionable move involving what are normally highly guarded secrets.

And it happened when those prosecutors questioned Habba, who put herself in an impossible situation when she declared in the New York AG’s case that she thoroughly searched every nook and cranny at Mar-a-Lago for documents relevant in that business fraud case—only to have the FBI later find classified documents in those desk drawers and cabinets months later.

“It's either perjury or incompetence,” said one insider.

Several attorneys on Trump’s team consider these two events as potential liabilities, given that the feds could pressure them to become witnesses against their client.

The DOJ case is getting so hot, some lawyers have begun to see it as radioactive to their careers. One lawyer on Trump’s team emphatically told The Daily Beast, “I have nothing to do with that. I have a law license to protect.” Another stressed they might slam the eject button before it gets much worse.

“It’s crazy in there. It really is. I’ve heard there’s a mess coming,” this person said.

 

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1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Sounds great, but that’s a lot of anonymous sources that are willing to talk with the daily beast. 

 

While I understand your point, anyone associated with Trump pretty much has to remain anonymous out of fear of MAGA coming for themselves, their families, etc.  

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Yeah the last few months of very political violence.  For most of these mid-level folks speaking off the record or just now coming out with their stories...I can't fault them anymore.  Yeah, they should have come forward earlier.  But their own internal war is just beginning and there's already been clear examples of political retribution on individuals and quite credible threats made to their families.  

On the one hand, I am very protective of my daughters.  On the other hand, watching MAGA nation shoot up RINO's sounds kinda fun.

My madness aside, to be balanced and honest...the FBI has been telling these people for 3 fucking years about the internal terrorist threats coming from the Far Right that could even turn on the centre-right.  And what has GOP leadership told us, "The FBI is corrupt and politically motivated!"  Pardon them if they don't jump in front of a bullet meant for you or your kid's skull.  

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11 minutes ago, Red Five said:

He's pushing 80. How many big fat 80 year-old people do you know? He's on the clock. 

His parents lived to 93 and 88, when medical technology was not where it is today.  We are stuck in the living world with this piece of shit for at least 10 more years.

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2 hours ago, The Royal We said:

Why would he have any reason to believe such a virtuous and honest man like Dotard would mislead him about such a thing!?

He didn't that's why Christina Bobb signed the attestation. 

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13 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Funny that Corcoran would say such things to limit the legal exposure of Corcoran. 

Actually, what Corcoran apparently did was dictate 50 pages worth of notes over the entire MAL episode, detailing things like Trump's facial expression.  I think moreso than his testimony, these notes were delivered up to the prosecution as a result of the crime-fraud penetration of the privilege.

Corcoran and the government both were told in no uncertain terms that the "storage room" was the only place such presidential records were kept.

Apparently Habba is on the shit list because she swore up and down in the NY AG civil case that all of Trump's premises had been thoroughly searched and no one ever noticed any classified documents.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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that awkward moment when you remember the moment you "declassified the documents" by thinking it silently in your mind, but actually said the "mind thinking" part out loud.  Into a recording device.  That the Feds have.  Regarding the second hottest region on the planet right now in terms of warfare.  

Holy shit.  This is a fucking simulation.  Best thing I can make up is a Taliban Office Space parody, the rest of this is just fucking insanity.  I think up bizarre, impossibly scenarios to derisk for a living and I couldn't invent this shit if you gave me a pound of Junior's coke and 60 days in Bali.  We're not even to the indictment phase yet and this shit is beyond the pale even for Trump.  

Wish we could get the non-CR's to explain this to me.  

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32 minutes ago, Red Five said:

They have him dead to rights on this. Does it really matter what he said two years ago about whatever crazy shit he believes he can and can't do? 

Idk, but twicehorn is the guy I go to if I want to hear about how the justice system will disappoint us 

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to be fair to twicehorn, he would have a point that releasing such damming stuff like this would certainly taint a jury pool that's already gonna be a huge pain in the ass to summon and charge without prejudice as it stands now.  

I mean, the voir dire is gonna read like a fucking Christopher Guest mockumentary at this point.

Defense attorney, "Have you any advanced knowledge of this case against President Trump?"

Juror #7, "Well I heard a tape of his on the news about these documents we're hear for in this courtroom today."

Defense attorney, "But you have no personal bias one way or the other and did not vote in any Presidential elections since 1996.  Correct?"

Juror #7, "No, I'm apolitical.  It's just that....I mean.....he literally said he took the documents, he knew he shouldn't, he kept them hidden, told people he couldn't share them because of their classification level, and they were about sensitive military operations that put U.S. service members lives at risk and as a veteran myself, I found that disturbing."

Defense attorney, "But not as disturbing as Hunter Biden's laptop.....ISN'T THAT TRUE SIR?!?!?!"  

This whole thing really is gonna come down to calendars.  Watch.

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41 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Idk, but twicehorn is the guy I go to if I want to hear about how the justice system will disappoint us 

All along, I've been telling you how you meticulously prepare a case to nail a defendant.  I'm not sure how they found this or when, but this case is going to be more airtight than Stormy Daniels in a BBC gangbang.

You do not seize the document with a search warrant, indict, and go into court telling a jury "he had the documents and he's not a good-faith actor" so you must convict.  You do your goddamndest to foreclose any defense the POS might offer and a gullible jury might bite on.

At this point, though, Smith may just be gilding the lily.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:

It’ll be a very quick trial

 

what does the DoJ plea deal look like ?

Standard DOJ guidelines for a plea is that it must be to the "highest" (worst statutory penalty) offense in the indictment absent extraordinary circumstances (like a ruling of inadmissibility of a key piece of evidence).  So, you can likely bet on that.

Some details that are subject to negotiation might be aspects of sentencing, as in what guideline factors the government will or won't argue or will agree don't apply, or, the applicable sentencing range, or, in a somewhat extraordinary case, the actual sentence.

54 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

I fully expect the DOJ to schedule a trial for this in January of 2025

Judges set trial dates, not DOJ.

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18 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

she swore up and down in the NY AG civil case that all of Trump's premises had been thoroughly searched and no one ever noticed any classified documents.

spacer.png

I never specified that the thorough search was for classified documents. I just said it was a thorough search. So I feel pretty safe here. After all, I am a lawyer. The search was actually for a ketchup packet that President Trump mislaid. And it's true that no one noticed any classified documents or a gold bar with the imprint of the House of Saud.

 

Edited by RomaVicta
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1 minute ago, Biff Tannen said:

Maybe I'm just numb, but why is this worse than any of the other 9000000000 things he's been "caught" doing?  I won't believe anything will come of this until that motherfucker is swinging from a rope or behind bars.

Because they have the EVIDENCE.

Your belief that he's guilty of innumerable crimes doesn't count for shit in a court of law.

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1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Because they have the EVIDENCE.

Your belief that he's guilty of innumerable crimes doesn't count for shit in a court of law.

We have EVIDENCE of him on a recorded call to the Georgia Sec of State telling him to commit election fraud too.  I know that is still ongoing, but that seems like more of a slam dunk to me than this.

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2 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

We have EVIDENCE of him on a recorded call to the Georgia Sec of State telling him to commit election fraud too.  I know that is still ongoing, but that seems like more of a slam dunk to me than this.

No way. The people on a jury can still subjectively decide that wasn’t tampering. It’s just how he talks. In This recording he admits that he knew he had documents, he admits he knew they weren’t declassified. He directly contradicts his own sworn statements. 

37 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Standard DOJ guidelines for a plea is that it must be to the "highest" (worst statutory penalty) offense in the indictment absent extraordinary circumstances (like a ruling of inadmissibility of a key piece of evidence).  So, you can likely bet on that.

Some details that are subject to negotiation might be aspects of sentencing, as in what guideline factors the government will or won't argue or will agree don't apply, or, the applicable sentencing range, or, in a somewhat extraordinary case, the actual sentence.

Judges set trial dates, not DOJ.

And what is a reasonable expectation of a trial date after an indictment? How Lu b time will they need to mount a defense? I’m guessing it’s going to get damn close to Nov 2024.

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13 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

We have EVIDENCE of him on a recorded call to the Georgia Sec of State telling him to commit election fraud too.  I know that is still ongoing, but that seems like more of a slam dunk to me than this.

No, you don't.  You have evidence from which you can infer that he wanted the SecState to commit election fraud.  But you don't have him saying "commit election fraud."

And that's important, because Trump would argue that when he wanted to Raffensberger to "find" another 11,000 votes, he was referring to votes that he believed had been undercounted due to technical failures with Dominion's machines, or Democratic shenanigans in Fulton County, or Jewish space lasers.  Whatever.  To conclude that Trump was telling the Georgia SecState, you have to disbelieve what Trump says and make an inference.

Here, all you have to do is believe what Trump says.

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31 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

We have EVIDENCE of him on a recorded call to the Georgia Sec of State telling him to commit election fraud too.  I know that is still ongoing, but that seems like more of a slam dunk to me than this.

It's not.

We'll see what evidence Fani Willis develops to support the inference that it was something malignant or malicious and we still have no idea really what crimes he might have committed, but I guess we'll find out.

It is somewhat alarming that there seem to be more leaks out of Smith's investigation than out of Willis'.  As badly as we want information about the cases, leaks are not good, and could even jeopardize the cases.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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11 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

No, you don't.  You have evidence from which you can infer that he wanted the SecState to commit election fraud.  But you don't have him saying "commit election fraud."

And that's important, because Trump would argue that when he wanted to Raffensberger to "find" another 11,000 votes, he was referring to votes that he believed had been undercounted due to technical failures with Dominion's machines, or Democratic shenanigans in Fulton County, or Jewish space lasers.  Whatever.  To conclude that Trump was telling the Georgia SecState, you have to disbelieve what Trump says and make an inference.

Here, all you have to do is believe what Trump says.

Or even give the fat piece of shit the benefit of the doubt.

What's wild to me, though, is how his attorneys intend to defend him without him taking the stand and spinning some bullshit like the above.  I guess they just make the argument in closing:  "The state proved to you that Donald Trump asked him to find 11,000 votes, but they didn't tell you or give you any evidence to figure out what he meant by "find."  Finding votes is not against the law; you won't be instructed that to find votes is illegal."

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Those of you who are lawyers have reasons for not wanting (or if you're a prosecutor, wanting) a defendant to take the stand.

Which of those reasons apply to Trump here, assuming competent attorneys work for him?

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