Posted on 03/26/2008 12:04:54 PM PDT by Anti-Hillary
Greg Craig, Obama Hitman, May Have Violated Attorney-Client Privilege With Clintons
Is the Obama campaign violating the fundamental tenet of American jurisprudence, the sacred bond of trust between a lawyer and their client? Under the rules of every bar association, based on tradition going back centuries of Anglo-Saxon legal principles, a lawyer must never exploit the intimate relationship with a client for other purposes that might benefit the lawyer. For this breach of trust, lawyers have regularly been disbarred.
Who is the possible ethical pirate operating at the beck and call of the Obama campaign?
Greg Craig, top adviser to Obama, holding a rank equal to recently disgraced and resigned aide Samantha Power, is a longtime partner at the Washington law firm, Williams and Connally. Now he’s Obama’s designated hatchet man, sent out on cable TV to deliver negative attack lines against Hillary Clinton. Craig knows no limits in his frenzied assaults on a person he has known well since they attended Yale Law School together. Craig knows better. He knows Hillary is a person of values and integrity, even as he smears her.
[The NYT photo caption, above right: CANDIDATE CABINET Foreign-policy advisers of Senator Obama (at head of table) include, from left around table, Gregory Craig, Susan Rice, Anthony Lake, Maj. Gen. Scott Gration and Samantha Power.]
But as nasty as this picture is, it’s actually much worse–and potentially a legal problem for the high-flying Craig.
Attorney Craig is ethically challenged. He and his firm, Williams and Connally, have been the attorneys of record for Bill and Hillary Clinton for more than a decade.
In the law firm, he regularly consulted with the Clintons’ personal lawyer, David Kendall, on numerous occasions. But not only that, Craig himself was hired as the lead attorney, working on the White House legal staff, for the President during the impeachment trial. Over a two-year period, throughout 1998 and 1999, Craig, as an attorney, was privy to the private legal matters involving the president and his wife. (See the Washington Post article, “Crisis Quarterback: Gregory Craig Is Calling the Plays On Clinton’s Team,” November 19, 1998.) [PHOTO: Greg Craig speaking on the floor of Congress on behalf of President Clinton]
For his work, the president thanked him, and Craig’s business thrived. But he decided that his ambition dictated that he betray his old friends and clients to align himself with Obama, where he thinks he has a better chance of getting a big job. Bill Richardson has nothing on Greg Craig in the Judas Iscariot betrayal department.
But as unethical as rank betrayal is, the problem is graver.
Is Greg Craig exploiting the attorney-client privilege that he and his firm have had with the Clintons in order to advance his career position and the political fortunes of Obama?
Could he face a disbarment hearing over his exploitation of his attorney-client privilege for political purposes?
Will the supine mainstream media, slavishly following the Obama campaign’s barks and calls like one of Pavlov’s dogs, ever even ask about Greg Craig’s potential ethical conflict of interest and breach of trust?
Where is Obama’s promise to run an ethical campaign on positive issues when his attack dog has questionable ethics and using personal attacks on a former client?
Will Obama fire Greg Craig to uphold his pledge?
Once again, Obama, who has smeared the former president for “McCarthyism,” demonstrates that there is no bottom to his ethically challenged negative campaign.
To paraphrase Joseph Welch’s famous statement to Senator Joseph McCarthy: “You’ve done enough, Greg Craig and Barack Obama. Have you no sense of decency, sirs, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
“Hillary is a person of values and integrity”—ROTFLMAO!
So, what did he do to get disbarred?
This is great, just bought a whole case of Kettle Corn, especially after Bosnia-gate the hits just keep on coming!
Good God, is there anyone left who knows how to write and speak the English language?
Funny. If the Clintons are truly innocent, what could Mr. Craig possibly reveal? Could he be disbarred for divulging the secret that Hillary Clinton is “a person of values and integrity”? (Perhaps he could, because that would be an out-and-out lie.)
It’s sad to say, but there are very few.
Used information obtained while being hired as an attorney for the Clintons to attack the Clintons in the media as Obama's attack dog. There are very few reasons an attorney can break the attorney-client privelege. Personal gain is not one of them.
There's a difference between the attorney's obligation not to disclose privileged information and the attorney's right to express opinions that are unrelated to his prior employment, but involve the same client. Saying, “he told me he perjured himself” is a violation. Saying, “the guy ran over my foot yesterday” isn't.
All Craig is doing is using his skills as an advocate to make arguments based on the same information that's available to the rest of us. He's doing it persuasively, which is why the Hillary camp wants to shut him up, but what he's doing is perfectly permissible.
I stopped reading here...
And just how does one comparmentalize all that information to make he doesn't mix in some privileged information along with non-priveleged information?
>> is there anyone left who knows how to write and speak the English language?
I see what you mean!
How could the words “trust” and “lawyer” appear together in a valid sentence??!? :-)
Greg Craig — another name to add to the Arkancide-Watch List! Chris Matthews, Bill Richardson — I’m sure there are more!
It’s the ‘PC-ization’ of the language at work again. I recently proofed a contract that used ‘that person’ in place of ‘his’. It did so in a clause that referred to more than one person, thereby turning an easily interpreted sentence into one that created an ambiguity as to who the contract applied to. Political correctness will be the death of us all.
...or... um... “as to whom it applied”...
Carefully.
Larry, you need to stop smoking that joint. Your mind has turned to applesauce.
Obama’s got Klintoon bag man Gregory Craig in his camp? The same SOB who did all the in front of camera lying when the stormtroopers took away Elian? That’s insanity to let a Klintoon insider like that anywhere near him plus just being associated with scum like that.
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