Legal Ethics Forum

Lawyers and the FISA process

I've been on a long, long hiatus here, but the revelations about lawyering in the FISA process have been jaw dropping. If you're aware of any good round-ups, please post them in the comments. In the meantime, consider this exchange from earlier today. Given what I've seen in the Executive Summary of the new IG Report, I can only assume that multiple lawyers will be severely disciplined.

This exchange. Staggering.

Cruz: “A lawyer at the FBI creates fraudulent evidence, alters an email that is in turn used as the basis for a sworn statement to the court that the court relies on. Am I stating that accurately?"

Horowitz: "That's correct. That's what occurred"

 

https://twitter.com/RepMarkMeadows/status/1204847596017205249

Truthfulness in Statements to Clients

Former ABA Ethics Counsel Dennis Rendleman has an interesting piece on the failure of the Model Rules to define the degree of truthfulness required of lawyers in communicating with their clients. While concluding that it would be philosophically sound to amend professional conduct rules to either bar false statements by lawyers to clients or bar false statement of material fact to clients, he wonders if such an amendment would improve public trust in the honesty of lawyers.