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Dear WaPo: If you're going to quote Trump's spox--twice!!--claiming that investigating lawyers is a sign of a weak case, THAT's your chance to ask why they're claiming Epshteyn was acting as a lawyer, when Epshteyn told the FEC it was strategy consulting.https://t.co/IztudrEaGU

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 4, 2023

Before Trump, questioning lawyers about what facts they knew related to the investigation of their client was a no-go.  It wasn’t done. It wasn’t allowed.

I’ve made legal arguments in front of judges and in even the most seemingly inconsequential issues, they can turn “conservative.” Not in the political sense, in the true sense: sticking with the familiar, instead of the new. A good judge is open to persuasion, a bad judge won’t listen at all. So it goes. But on big things even good judges need really good reasons to go out in a limb and make the call nobody else is making.

But forcing attorneys to testify, and Making Attorneys Get Attorneys, is all the rage right now. That is not a permanent state of affairs; but for now prosecutors have found the key to that lock.

And that key is Donald Trump. He is the reason prosecutors opened that door. He is the reason judges are propping it open.

Making attorneys testify is not a sign of a weak case; it’s a sign of such a strong case even the old verities and safeguards have to have a gate installed; and that gate is now open.

I get that Trump’s lawyers want to try the cases against him in the courts of public opinion, but if this is all they got, buddy, they got nothin’.