I. Keep Your Eye on Trump’s Lawyers
A chaotic meeting on December 18, 2020
On December 18, 2020, Sydney Powell, Michael Flynn, Patrick Byrne, and Rudy Giuliani came to the White House with unhinged ideas about how Trump should declare martial law, seize voting machines, and name Powell special counsel to investigate the already debunked claims of voter fraud. White House lawyers and other White House staff injected sanity and apparently prevailed.
The meeting, described as “chaotic,” included shouting, hurling of insults, accusations of “disloyalty” to Trump, and even threats of physical assault. (For a refresher about some of the details, see this video.)
Attendees of the meeting included:
- Pat Cipollone (Lawyer, White House Counsel)
- Eric Herschmann (Lawyer, White House Counsel)
- Robert O’Brien (Trump’s national security advisor)
- Derek Lyins (Trump White House Staff Secretary)
- Mark Meadows (Trump Chief of Staff, arrived late)
- Rudy Guiliani (Trump’s lawyer)
- Sidney Powell (Trump’s lawyer)
- Michael Flynn (Trump advisor)
- Patrick Byrne (Overstock CEO)
Later that night, apparenly in reaction to the meeting, Trump posted his famous “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild” tweet.
This week we learned that DOJ investigators have been asking witnesses before the grand jury and during interviews about that December 18 meeting.
Meanwhile, this piece has gotten a lot of attention. We get this interesting tidbit:
(Guiliani, incidentally, is also on his way to being disbarred.)
How Trump Uses Lawyers
For a refresher, see this post called “Mob Lawyers and Trump Lawyers.” Also see this timeline of the Georgia investigation and notice the hurdles that Fani Willis had to jump to get lawyers’ testimony and documents. The DOJ has been similarly working to get to the lawyers’ testimony and documents.
These extra hurdles are in place because of attorney-client privilege.
Attorney-client privilege keeps communications between an attorney and his or her client private. The rationale is that people need to be able to speak freely to their lawyers. However, lawyers cannot hide lawbreaking behind the privilege. The simplest illustration: You can tell your lawyer that you committed murder, but your lawyer cannot help you hide the body. If there is evidence that the lawyer was either witness to an ongoing crime or part of the planning of a future crime, the crime fraud exception applies and a court can compel the lawyer to testify against a client. (Exeutive privilege similarly protects communication to promote free discussion among a president and advisors.)
Trump, who evidently never knew about the crime-fraud exception, seemed to have been under the delusion that he could say anything to his lawyers and they could not repeat it. This may have been his fatal error.
The best way to understand how Trump uses lawyers to insulate himself is from this passage from the Mario Puzo’s The Godfather (pages 41-42):
That Sunday morning, Don Corleone gave explicit instructions on what should be done to the two young men who had beaten the daughter of Amerigo Bonasera. But he had given these orders in private to Tom Hagen. Later in the day Hagen had, also in private without witnesses, instructed Clemenza. In turn Clemenza had told Paulie Gatto to execute the commission.”
The advantage of giving orders in private without witnesses is explained:
Each link of the chain would have to turn traitor for the Don to be involved and though it had never yet happened, there was always the possibility. The cure for that possibility was also known. Only one link in the chain had to disappear.
Also from The Godfather: the only way to get to the Godfather is for the consigliere to turn against his boss.
Trump’s lawyers—his consiglieres—were in the room when the planning happened, and many of them, including White House Counsel who were present at the December 18 meeting, are talking to Special Counsel.
II. Social Media and Disinformation
An interesting thing happened on Twitter. You can read all about it in this Washington Post article, which I can offer as a gift through my subscription. This link will get you past the paywall.)
The person operating this account opened it in September of 2022. Here is how “Erica Marsh” described herself in her Twitter profile picture:
In fact, it was all made up. Nobody named Erica Marsh was a field organizer for Biden or a volunteer for the Obama Foundation. “Erica Marsh” often made the kinds of comments you might expect from a proud Democrat, like this one:
And this one:
Notice how she triggered an disgusted conservative to respond to her.
Under the guise of being a liberal, she told straight up lies, like this one:
She posted absurd comments, feeding into the worst conservatives stereotypes about the student loan forgivenness program, like this one:
On June 29, she responded to the Supreme Court decision with a stunningly racist comment:
When people called her on the racism, she dug in. Here are examples of how horrified conservatives, who believed she was speaking for Democrats and liberals, responded:
In a mere 8 months, she amassed a following of almost 130,000 which gave her even more visibility.
“Trust Building”
Whoever was operating the “Erica Marsh” account was using a Russian propaganda technique whereby a fake account, pretending to be something it is not, amasses a large following and influences the public discussion, usually by playing up existing stereotypes and spreading lies.
We learned about this technique from an indictment Special Counsel Robert Mueller brought against the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a sophisticated propaganda network that operated out of St. Petersburg and worked to disrupt the 2016 election. Hundreds of IRA “Specialists” operated Facebook pages and individual accounts and pretended to be Americans. Among other things, they operated a Black Lives Matter page that attracted 100,000 American followers who believed they were interacting with fellow activists. They operated an “Army of Jesus” facebook page, which attracted over 216,000 American followers.
These propagandists first built a following by posting content designed to appeal to various groups. For example the “Army of Jesus” page began by posting content like this:
- October 26, 2016: “There has never been a day when people did not need to walk with Jesus.”
- October 29, 2016: “I’ve got Jesus in my soul. It’s the only way I know. Watching every move I make, guiding every step I take!”
- October 31, 2016: “Rise and shine-realize His blessing!”
- October 31, 2016: “Jesus will always be by your side. Just reach out to Him and you’ll see!
After building trust, IRA specialists deployed “payload content,” (a carefully constructed lie). Here’s an example:
The specialists measured their success by the outrage and anger generated by the payload content. After deploying payload content, they resumed their confidence building content, like this:
After building confidence on a Black Lives Matters, page, they deployed messages like these:
- I won’t vote for Hillary Clinton
- I won’t vote at all
- Why should we vote?
- Our votes don’t matter
- A vote for Jill Stein [Green Party candidate] is not a wasted vote.
Why would someone create a pretend left-wing account like Erica Marsh on Twitter?
To increase polarization. To trigger and enrage people, which stimulates engagement. To give the impression that “both sides” are being presented, when really, one side is manipulating both sides. To perpetuate false claims and stereotypes about Democrats. And most importantly, to influence voters.
These techniques are effective and dangerous. Because social media has been the source of much disinformation, we need to pay attention.
This brings me to social media in transition.
As you probably heard, Twitter was in chaos last weekend when it experienced multiple technical difficulties that disrupted normal user functions. The chaos prompted a second migration away from Twitter.
My fear for Twitter under Musk was this: He wouldn’t disrupt the essential functions, so users would simply ignore the ugly on the periphery. Meanwhile, Twitter would turn into an effective right-wing propaganda machine. Savvy users would be able to distinguish propaganda from honest discourse and understand how to check their sources, but the average Twitter users would believe they were witnessing a genuine dialogue between “both sides.”
(Aside: I won’t take time here to go into my reasons, but I believe that my follower count and engagement on Twitter is being artifically inflated to persuade me that I have more reach on Twitter than I do.)
Now that Musk has disrupted the essential functions of how Twitter works—meaning that savvy users can not innoculate themselves from Musk’s chaos— Twitter may well just turn into another right-wing echo chamber like Truth Social or Parler. The word will be, “You can’t believe anything on Twitter.”
Threads
Mark Zuckerberg seized the moment of Twitter’s meltdown to release Threads, a new social media app that had 70 million downloads in 2 days, shattering the previous record set by ChatGPT.
Here is the important thing about Threads (yes, even more important than the fact that Ophrah Winfrey, Ellen Degeneres, and the Kashkardians are already on Threads): Zuckerberg has promised to install Activity Pub, thereby decentralizing Threads and connecting it to the fediverse and sites like Post.net.
If you have no idea what that last sentence meant, no worries. I prepared a separate page on social media in transition and Twitter alternatives where I discuss the topic—which is important because it has potential to upend social media and change how we get our information, which has huge implications for democracy and future discourse.
Social Media in Transition
On this page, I start with a section on algorithms, “internet triggers,” and authoritarianism, and then discuss the various platforms. There is a lot of material, so grab a cup of your favorite beverage, settle into a comfy chair, and click here.
But first, let’s ponder deep questions: How do people without dogs know the precise moment the mail carrier arrives? Do they miss not knowing?
