Pound The Table II

Out of all the weekend's news, the UFOs, the FBI wanting to infiltrate the sedevacantists, the new revelations on the classified document coverup, the one thing I haven't been able to drop is why Abbe Lowell has been pounding the table for his client, Hunter Biden. I talked about this Friday. I'm not a lawyer, but then, neither was Raymond Burr, who just played one on TV. But Jonathan Turley is one, both a law professor and a practicing criminal defense attorney, and he offers an insight that I'd missed:

[Lowell and the Biden team] seem to be adopting the strategy of Steve Bannon that resulted in his conviction for contempt of Congress. Lowell categorically refused to turn over material to Congress this week, leaving his client open to a subpoena and possible prosecution. The move may have thrilled hardcore Democrats, but it is the Republicans who should be most ecstatic with Hunter's initial position.

. . . In a letter to House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY), Lowell declared "Peddling your own inaccurate and baseless conclusions under the guise of a real investigation, turns the Committee into ‘Wonderland’ and you into the Queen of Hearts shouting, ‘sentence first, verdict afterwords.’"

. . . Lowell would have been far smarter to turn over some material to the Committee in good faith while seeking to negotiate on the scope of the inquiry.

. . . In the Bannon case, the Democrats spared little time in seeking a contempt order. Just one week after Bannon missed a date to appear, they voted out the contempt sanction of Committee, and it was quickly approved by the House as a whole. It was contempt of Congress, as I said at the time.

. . . He just [laid] the foundation for the Oversight Committee to move quickly toward a subpoena and ultimately a contempt sanction, if he maintains this position. Lowell actually expedited the process for the House, shortening the calendar for possible contempt proceedings. If this matter were to go to the courts (either as a criminal contempt matter or an enforcement matter, or both), there is now plenty of time for the Committee to prevail in securing much of this material.

That would place Attorney General Merrick Garland in a tough position. After years of the Justice Department largely ignoring contempt sanctions, Garland moved aggressively to prosecute Trump figures like Bannon. The failure to do so with Hunter Biden would fuel concerns over political bias at the Department.

Just from watching true crime shows on TV, I can figure out that especially for a guilty client but even if a case is 50-50, it's in the defense's interest to delay everything. Witnesses' memories deteriorate, police officers leave the force, parties pass away, the case fades into obscurity. Lowell could have unctuously feigned cooperation, turning over thousands of pages of completely innocuous material whlle pretending to negotiate with the committee in good faith. In fact, he could then, standing in front of cartons stacked on dollies, publicly remonstrate that the committee is disregarding his ample cooperation and pursuing a political agenda.

Instead, he leaves this strategy aside, angrily refuses any pretense of compromise, and pounds the table. Taking a different route, Prof Turley is more or less confirming my own instinct that if Abbe Lowell is such a smart guy, why is he acting so dumb? He wrote Chairman Comer a letter that a simple English major could do a better job with -- in fact, an AI bot could have written it, and it quite possibly could have done it for free. I don't want to think about Abbe Lowell's bill for the week. But the bottom line is that, with every delay to his advantage, he set things up for the quickest possible Republican response.

If nothing else, this calls into question Bidenworld's judgment overall. People can claim Joe has cognitive issues, but here, he's surrounded by White House counsel, private attorneys, political advisers, and even family -- from what we hear, first ladies like Nancy Reagan have had great behind-the-scenes influence, as have presidential sons like Bush fils. Whatever Biden's own mental capacity -- my view continues to be that he's been dumb as a rock all his life, but he hasn't deteriorated that much -- nobody around him seems able to give better advice.

They're paying Abbe Lowell how much? And he's doing that? Where are Biden's advisers? Where's Jill? Well, she's smooching Kamala's husband (there's a Bob Dylan lyric lurking there someplace). Where's Ashley? Where's, er, Hunter? Well, as Aquinas said, sin dulls the intellect.