(THREAD) I knew this day would come eventually—but I had to wait over two years for it. Now that it's come, I'd like to briefly say something about it. The upshot: I've just been vindicated on the most abiding, popular, and wholly untrue attack ever made against me and this feed. 
1/ For all that it sometimes seems there have been about 250 hitpieces written about me and this feed, the truth is, there have been about a dozen over the last five years—they just get recycled over and over and over again whenever someone wants to discredit something I've said.
2/ The most popular hitpiece—meaning I've had it thrown at me 500 times since 2017, seen it go viral on Reddit and elsewhere—was written by a SLATE blogger in December 2017. It was shamefully disingenuous—but that doesn't matter. People post a thing if they like its conclusions.
3/ One reason it really hurt was that it had to do with professional ethics, a topic I teach at the college level—both legal ethics and professional ethics broadly—and that has long been deeply important to me. I also have a sterling record in this department, and am proud of it.
4/ I practiced law for many years, representing thousands of clients. Never once—in my career as a practicing lawyer—did I get a professional conduct complaint. That's an unusual thing for someone in criminal defense—a high-stakes area in which folks understandably get emotional.
5/ It wasn't just luck, though—I take my ethical responsibilities seriously, as a lawyer and otherwise. So when I saw how Trump lawyer John Dowd was conducting himself in his defense of the president, I was livid—and had the necessary credentials to make some public observations.
6/ It was one of those situations on the internet—increasingly common—in which someone with expertise in a topic, who has a reasonable basis to speak on it, gets the stuffing taken out of him by a random blogger with no background in the area whatsoever. Thus: Ben Mathis-Lilley.
7/ Mathis-Lilley took a single tweet of mine—as of today, I've tweeted 66,557 times, and it was in the tens of thousands back in December 2017, too—and tried to use it as an exemplar of my "bad" tweets. The problem: it was on a topic Ben Mathis-Lilley knew not a damn thing about.
8/ In fact, the only thing I knew about Mathis-Lilley was that he was fired by BUZZFEED NEWS—where he was a sports editor—in 2014, 3 years before he came at me. I don't know why he was fired; he said it was for "not seeing eye-to-eye" with his employer and the internet let it go.
9/ It's nice when the internet lets things go. But oddly the internet did *not* let it go when a recently fired sports blogger from BUZZFEED NEWS took on an experienced criminal defense attorney...
...on the topic of legal ethics, which the former had no knowledge of whatsoever.
...on the topic of legal ethics, which the former had no knowledge of whatsoever.
10/ What I wrote about John Dowd was that he wasn't just acting unethically as a lawyer, but acting in a way that could expose him to criminal liability. He was—in short—getting so close to Trump's own crimes of obstruction, he was at least *at risk* of getting caught up in them.
11/ And because I knew that was true from being a trained professional in the field—indeed, the very sub-field Dowd was practicing in—I put out there (see the first tweet in this thread) that Dowd needed to be *investigated* by his bar, and maybe others, for possible discipline.
12/ Every attorney who's practiced law—but especially if you're a litigator, as I was—develops a "Spidey-sense" for a dirty lawyer. I'm not saying it's some special skill—in any field, you do the work long enough and you develop instincts that are professional-grade in character.
13/ John Dowd presented as dirty in the way he represented Trump—and when he suddenly showed up as Lev Parnas' lawyer, too, I knew I was getting close to the public vindication I'd been thinking about since the *291st* time that silly Matthis-Lilley article had been thrown at me.
14/ I knew vindication wouldn't erase that nearly every attack on this feed got my job title wrong, my work experience wrong, my past statements wrong, my—well—*everything* wrong, and I mean simple (fact-checkable) stuff, but it'd be a start.
My bio, BTW: sethabramson.net/bio
My bio, BTW: sethabramson.net/bio
15/ Anyway, so tonight this (the article below) popped up on my feed. The whole thing is worth a read.
16/ "Lev Parnas claimed he was visited in jail by a former attorney for President Trump who told him to cooperate and sacrifice himself for the president. John Dowd, who once served as an attorney for Trump, briefly served as Parnas's attorney after he was indicted in October."
17/ In case you're wondering—though I think you'd have to know as little about what it means to practice law as Ben Matthis-Lilley to wonder it—attorneys who are on the level don't show up to their first meeting with a new client and tell them to take the fall for another client.
18/ In the two years and one month I've had to see this stupid-ass hitpiece by a sports blogger be thrown at me like it has legitimacy—besides, I guess, being published by a failing website, SLATE—I've written two books on the Trump presidency, both New York Times bestsellers.
19/ I mention the books in *this* context only to say that they collectively involved thousands of hours of research and that they were widely read precisely because they had been thoroughly researched—and sourced. And in those books, I naturally talk a lot about Trump's lawyers.
20/ I've now written—in print, my NEWSWEEK column, or here on the feed—about virtually every Trump attorney you could name: Dowd, Cobb, Sekulow, Giuliani, diGenova, Toensing, Garten, Dershowitz, McGahn, others. Plus legal agents like Parnas and Fruman. It's a subject I know well.
21/ Trump's pattern—and philosophy—in hiring lawyers was inspired by his mentor, Roy Cohn: a lawyer is someone who you hire to be a criminal co-conspirator, and they're a particularly useful criminal co-conspirator because it's much harder for the police to get at what they know.
22/ You didn't think this thread was really just about me and Ben Matthis-Lilley, I hope! No—my point was to swing this around to talking about what happened *today*: Trump naming some new members of his legal team, a topic I've already tweeted about a lot here on the feed today.
23/ I have a special relationship—in a way—with Trump's legal team, because one of them (Dershowitz) is my former Criminal Law professor, and two (diGenova and Toensing) I began writing about as likely criminals so long ago—December 2016!—everyone assumed I was out over my skis.
24/ A fourth Trump attorney—Rudy Giuliani—I began writing about as a likely criminal co-conspirator of the President-elect even further back than my writing on diGenova and Toensing: all the way back in November 2016. That's because (attn: Mr. Lilley) legal ethics *matter to me*.
25/ And of course I wrote a book, PROOF OF COLLUSION, in which Don McGahn plays a key role, and in which another Trump attorney—Michael Cohen—plays an even *bigger* role. I've been on many, many media outlets (CNN, BBC, CBC, CTV, Cheddar, you name it) talking about Michael Cohen.
26/ Trump has such a long history of using lawyers to commit/cover up crimes that—I say this advisedly—any lawyer who agrees to represent him is not on the level. Because this isn't like "repping a bad guy"—I did that—it's representing someone who wants you to *crime* with them.
27/ If you showed me a Trump lawyer who'd *never in their life heard of Trump* and who had—upon being approached by him—*never done any due diligence on him*, like say a public defender from Mars assigned by a court to represent him, I'd have some sympathy. But that's it. Really.
28/ I could even say I have a *tiny* bit of sympathy for McGahn and Cipollone—they're (very broadly speaking) doing their job, albeit I'd say McGahn crossed over the line. But Starr? Ray? My old law professor? Pam Bondi, who allegedly engaged in a corrupt quid pro quo with Trump?
29/ My point: the tweet I took 2+ years of heavy sh*t for was on a topic I'm qualified to write about, that I care deeply about, that I have a great track-record on personally, and that I now teach—and proudly—at the college level re: law, journalism, and the workplace generally.
30/ It's from this standpoint—and not for nothing, the standpoint of someone (attn: Mr. Lilley) who has *been a sports journalist* for *three media outlets* and *never been fired*—that I say that everything you suspect about these attorneys around Trump is reasonable to suspect.
31/ It's not *just* that Dershowitz is an accused rapist and known rape apologist; it's not *just* that Starr was fired at Baylor for being a rape apologist and enabler; it's not *just* that Bondi is accused of doing with Trump what Trump is accused of doing with Zelensky.
Nope.
Nope.
32/ It's not *just* that one Trump lawyer is in federal prison (Cohen) and four others are under federal investigation (Giuliani, Garten, diGenova, Toensing); it's not *just* that Trump's mentor (Roy Cohn) was a criminal; it's not *just* that Jay Sekulow is a "TV lawyer."
Nope.
Nope.
33/ It's not *just* that two men who worked for Trump's legal team—Parnas and Fruman—are under federal indictment; it's not *just* that Trump's first White House counsel (McGahn) is a key witness in a federal criminal investigation who's fighting a valid subpoena in court.
Nope.
Nope.
34/ It's that Donald Trump has a *goddamn conspicuous forty-year history* of using his many attorneys for a *very specific purpose* that *any person who's ever watched this man from any vantage-point* can see *immediately*: as criminal co-conspirators who he *pays* to keep quiet.
35/ (And mind you, sometimes he *doesn't* pay those who commit crimes for him—think Manafort, think Giuliani—because he knows, and they know, that they're getting a very different type of kickback somewhere on the back end. In the case of Manafort and Giuliani too many to count.)
36/ So if you're a recently fired sports blogger watching a well-educated, well-trained, highly experienced former criminal investigator and criminal defense lawyer writing about legal ethics, you sit down and listen. If you have questions, you go find a *second* expert opinion.
37/ But by the same token, if you're a part-time journalist and full-time professor who teaches journalism like me—or a full-time journalist like the ones at CNN and elsewhere—you have an *obligation* to see Trump's forty-year mistreatment of a profession I love and report on it.
38/ It's not a *coincidence* that Trump's legal team is a damn rogues' gallery—it's by *design*. Trump is looking for lawyers to lie for him in court, under oath if need be; lawyers to commit crimes for him, if need be; lawyers with no ethics, principles, or standards whatsoever.
39/ There is—again, I say this advisedly—no more *shameful* position to occupy in the *whole legal profession* than to be a lawyer for Donald Trump. The *only* analogy is to *willingly* become a mob attorney *long after* you've learned the mob wants you to commit crimes for them.
40/ So, Ben Matthis-Lilley, how do I feel about pegging John Dowd *exactly* correctly more than *two years* before his perfidy became evident to the public at large? I feel fantastic about it. Proud as hell. And I hope your breed of birdcage-liner "journalism" dies—and soon. /end
SOURCE1/ politico.com/media/story/20…
SOURCE2/ And here's Mathis-Lilley's thing—which positions itself as a critique of my writing style, but has been used for 2 years to attack my right to speak and credibility in speaking on ongoing criminal investigations, criminal cases, and legal ethics. slate.com/news-and-polit…
PS/ Apologies for misspelling Ben Mathis-Lilley's name a couple times—it was unintentional. I was thinking of someone I know of the same [first half of his] last name who spells it differently. If I'm going to disrespect a guy, it certainly won't be in that way—not intentionally.
PS2/ Another note about the Mathis-Lilley article, as so much has happened since December 2017: the idea that a Trump attorney might face criminal liability for conspiracy to obstruct justice went *mainstream*—because of McGahn—not long after my tweet. It was never "far-fetched."
PS3/ Moreover, a *year* later Trump and his lawyer Cohen would be SDNY co-conspirators—Trump unindicted—and *two years later* America would see its third-ever impeachment of a president *precisely* due to the actions of Trump's attorney *in concert with Trump*. I was on the nose.
