Special counsel Jack Smith’s team revealed the details of the employee’s about-face in a new filing.

A Trump employee who monitored security cameras at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate abruptly retracted his earlier grand jury testimony and implicated Trump and others in obstruction of justice just after switching from an attorney paid for by a Trump political action committee to a lawyer from the federal defender’s office in Washington, prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday.

  • @extantEnglish
    5•1 year ago

    I know exactly what you’re talking about, and my point still stands that when giving advislce you need to make it clear you are not a lawyer and if you are that you are not their lawyer when giving advice that could be misconstrued as legal advice and possibly cause liability issues. Telling someone directly “I am not a lawyer” or saying it as an acronym accomplishes just that. This isn’t a practice that stems from Reddit, but the legal system itself. While using it as an acronym was popularized over the Internet it’s certainly never been exclusive to Reddit but anywhere things may be construed as legal advice are.

      • @extantEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        I agree to an extent, but you can still provide valued information without being a lawyer a few examples: a subject matter expert, sharing first hand experience, contact information, or documents one might need. Sometimes those things might even be better than advice received from a lawyer.

        • @[email protected]
          0•1 year ago

          Fair enough. I guess my point is two fold: 1) “ianal” sounds stupid. 2) if you’re doing stuff like this so often you need an acronym for it, you probably should check yourself.