Why President Trump Needs to Add Victor Ward to His Legal Defense Team Immediately

Victor Ward emails:

Better Than Harvard Law
By Victor Ward

If you are in legal trouble, you want the best legal minds available to represent you. It is believed by some that the best legal minds come from the elite institutions: Ivy League schools, Stanford, University of Chicago, University of Texas, University of Michigan, USC, UCLA, Boalt (Berkeley), Vanderbilt, Georgetown, University of Virginia, etc. You can Google “best law schools” and get a typical list.


I had a Law Professor who taught Corporations: Professor Lambert. He clerked for Justice Rehnquist back in the 70s. He was my favorite Law Professor, although he gave me an “F.” The grade was well-deserved, as I was having some relationship troubles at the time. I never ended up dating that young lady, and I am glad that I didn’t. But, my infatuation with her really did some damage to my law school rating. 

I liked my Corporations class, and I liked Professor Lambert. I participated in the class, and he knew me fairly well. When I failed, he left me a personal note and asked me to visit him in his office. He explained to me that the grading system is blind, and that he gives the grade to a number, and he doesn’t know who the student is until later. I believed him because my effort on that test was abysmal. (It was a take home exam.)

We chatted in his office for about an hour, and he told me a few things that have stuck with me much more than anything else I heard in his class or in any other law school class.

One of those things was this: Going to a great school, an elite school, will help you to get a great job. But, once you start working, your employer is only going to care about one thing: Can you do your job well? Are you able to write a Motion to Dismiss that persuades the Judge? Can you write an Appellate Brief that convinces the majority of Justices to cast their vote for you and your client? Can you write a contract that closes all loopholes, or can you read a contract in order to find a favorable loophole or two or ten?

I remember him holding up his pen and saying, “Once you start working, no one is going to ask you where you graduated from? They are going to want to know if you can use this (the pen).”

He was correct. I know some big time attorneys who went to some big time law schools. And, there is no way that I would ever hire them to represent me.

With all of these indictments and plea deals that are happening with POTUS, Russia, Deep State, etc., we have all gotten the opportunity to listen to some really smart Attorneys. They are all much smarter than I am.

But, I have heard none of them give the right advice. Even the great Alan Dershowitz gave the wrong advice in this clip (Go to the 5:40 mark.). Yes, he is correct that you need to be very careful when you make a plea deal. But, he misses the most important thing:

Never, never, never talk to the Police/FBI or anyone in the District Attorney’s/DOJ’s office.

These guys are not your friends.

They do not care about you.

They do not think that this is something that can be wrapped-up quickly.

They are not going to only ask procedural questions.

They are not going to restrict their line of questioning to only a few, small, minor issues.

No, what both the Police/FBI and the Prosecutor are going to do is to take everything — and I do mean EVERYTHING — you say, and they are going to try and find a way to attach what you say to a crime.

Let’s check out a recent fact pattern with Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen: Cohen pled guilty to a charge of Conspiracy.

Why Conspiracy? They could have charged him with several crimes, so why this one? Because the charge of Conspiracy means that you were doing something illegal in concert with someone else. Of course, the someone else is Trump.

The truth of the matter is this: It does not matter whether Trump conspired or not. The Prosecutor can — in prosecutorial good faith (Well, there is really no such thing as prosecutorial "good faith," but I think you get what I mean.), charge Trump with Conspiracy to commit a crime.

How can a Prosecutor do this? The Prosecutor will say the following: Cohen pled guilty to the Conspiracy, and Cohen said that his Conspirator was Trump.

That’s all that is necessary to file an indictment against Trump.

Back to my original point: All of this happened because Cohen decided to talk to the FBI and US Attorneys and answer questions.

Why? What good did this do him or anyone else? Why make it easy on the Prosecutor? Cohen should have taken my advice: Don’t answer any questions any member of the DOJ may ask.

Furthermore:

Do not let them come to your office. Do not let them in your home. Do not give them anything.

The only thing that you should say is: “I want an attorney. I want all questioning to stop until I get my attorney. Thank you.”

Sure, they will try to persuade you and tell you that the process could be so much faster if you would just answer a few questions without your Attorney present.

They will tell you that you don’t need an Attorney because you don’t have anything to hide.

They will tell you that you are not under any investigation or indictment and that you don’t have anything to worry about.

These are all lies. If they cannot get you for X, they will try and get you for Y, and then use your conviction for Y to help get something else from you.

Here is another example: Jerome Corsi.

This guy seems intelligent enough, but in his interview he says the following things:

“I turned over the laptop and the Time Machine.”

“I turned over my cell phone.”

“ I turned over all my email accounts with username and password and consent forms.”

“I gave them permission to go after all my Verizon phone calls.”

“I gave them everything they wanted.”

Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. 

Don’t give the government any statements. Destroy your hard drive, especially if you, like Corsi, don’t need it. If you have a Court Order to not destroy something, that’s fine — don’t destroy it. But, there is no reason to unilaterally give it to the Police. There is no reason to give the police your password or your user name.

In fact, the only reason that I would bring something that they requested to them is so that they would not come to my house with a search warrant because once they get into your home, they are like roaches.

Let’s also take Trump. Rudy Giuliani seems to be a good Attorney, but why did he let Trump answer those Interrogatories? Answering the questions in writing is better than answering the questions in person, but not answering the questions at all is even better than that.

Your 5th Amendment right to not incriminate yourself does not disappear just because someone asked you to write your answers instead of speak your answers.

Now, if Trump is ever questioned by Mueller and the Crew, he is going to need to match his verbal answers with his written answers. To the extent that the written answers are vague, he is in good shape. The more detail he provided, the worse for Trump.

And, by the way, would someone who has a great legal mind please tell me how there can be a Federal crime of Perjury, or how lying to the FBI can be a crime?

If it is a Federal crime, that means the law was passed by Congress.

But, the Bill of Rights sates that “Congress shall make no law abridging the Freedom of Speech.”

When did free speech not include lying? If lying is part of free speech, Congress cannot make ANY law interfering with my right of free speech. I know that the Courts have chipped away at the First Amendment so much so that this one-time mighty oak is now nothing but a shrub. The text, however, is very clear to anyone — except, apparently, to an Attorney: Congress shall make NO law. 

My second-to-final piece of advice: If you do sit down with a government official, your Lawyer should do all the talking. Everything your lawyer says should be couched as a hypothetical.

Finally, Dershowitz is correct when he says that you should be very careful with your plea deals. Remember, if the Judge does not like the deal, the Judge does not need to accept the deal. Having the Judge present when the deal is finally arranged happens all of the time. (Deals often happen in the Judge’s chambers.) I would suggest that the final deal happen with your Attorney and the Prosecutor in front of the Judge so you can rest assured that there will be no funny business.

Victor J. Ward  first came across libertarianism by reading Murray Rothbard's Ronald Reagan: An Autopsy and Walter Block's Defending the Undefendable. He holds a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law and an MBA from Santa Clara University. He can be reached at victorjward@gmail.com