Discussion: Fox News Host Asks Stormy Daniels' Lawyer If He's Politically Motivated

To help folks remember, I explain them as “is equivalent” and “example given”.

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No it’s a dumb question. It can be seen from miles that whole Stormy Daniels affaire is is simply greed motivated. Stormy realized that she sold herself cheap and wants a new deal, and got herself a better lawyer. Not unlike late round NFL draft picks that turn out to be a star, gets a new agent and hold out the next season for a better deal.

The only reason we are enjoying this spectacle of raw greed is because it’s happening to Trump.

[quote=“dmp142, post:29, topic:69870”]
he’s making the most of the confounding nature of the term but “and/or” is generally taken to mean “x or y or both”.[/quote]

“Generally”? Even in the law? And even in California law?

[quote="centralasiaexpat, post:28, topic:69870, full:true"] Can someone explain the "and/or" usage to a non-lawyer? [/quote]

Here’s what one court has said about it:

Nevertheless the phrase is still frequently, though perhaps not advisedly, used in the preparation of contracts, negotiable instruments, and similar documents. Where so used, the commonly accepted meaning is that "and/or" means either "and" or "or," or both. Poucher v. State, 46 Ala. Cr. App. 272, 240 So. 2d 694, 695 (1970); Longacre v. Knowles, 333 SW 2d 67 (Mo. 1960); Oman Constr. Co., Inc. v. Tennessee Cent. Ry. Co., 212 Tenn. 556, 370 SW 2d 563 (1963); Thomas v. Penn Mut. Fire Ins. Co., 244 SC 581, 137 SE 2d 856 (1964). Applying this generally accepted interpretation […] it is clear that the items listed […] may be considered either conjunctively or disjunctively.

That’s from Klecan v. Schmal, 241 NW 2d 529 (Neb. 1976) and it makes clear that Cohen’s “and/or” is ambiguous. It can be interpreted in his favor but it can also be interpreted against him — plus there are other elements in the agreement that also suggest it’s not binding without Trump’s signature.

But here's a slightly different, and I suspect also relevant, point:

**It is manifest that we are confronted with the task of first construing “and/or,”** that befuddling, nameless thing, that Janus-faced verbal monstrosity, neither word nor phrase, the child of a brain of some one too lazy or too dull to express his precise meaning, or too dull to know what he did mean, now commonly used by lawyers in drafting legal documents, through carelessness or ignorance or as a cunning device to conceal rather than express meaning […]

This is from Employers Mut. Liability Ins. Co. v. Tollefsen, 263 NW 376 (1935).

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This is likely true. We can hope that Drumph’s people continue to be as cheap and stupid as they have been regarding this. I don’t think ‘Shut up and pay’ has occurred to them as an option. Perhaps it really isn’t. Who pays? How could it be hidden?

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I’m disappointed that Stormy and her lawyer don’t seem to be ripping open the seedy underbelly of Hollywood sex workers’ lawyers and their celebrity counterparts, who interact more like Realtors steering people towards quick and easy settlements instead of aggressively representing their respective clients.

Stormy, for her part, seems more interested in parlaying her experiences into one last go-round on the nudie bar circuit. I’m still surprised that the Rump Syndicate hasn’t made more of this.

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No comment. Just a big smile…

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Barring compelling evidence to the contrary, I think it’s embarrassing to assume that your ‘opponent’s‘ party affiliation is the determinant of their behavior, and so is consequently a disqualifying criteria. It’s the same allegation Drumpf has made against Mueller’s lawyers and McCabe: it’s just guilt by association.
It’s the ratfuckers seeing ratfucking in everyone else.
I suppose the next step is for the good people at Fox to start asking Republicans who don’t toe the Drumpfist line if they’re “Wilsonites,’ while the rest of the party sharpens their ice picks.

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“Absolutely not,” Avenatti replied. “That was 20-25 years ago and is laughable that people are pointing to that as the reason behind this.”

It’s Fox “News”; one should never expect anything less than “laughable.” Just ask Ralph Peters.

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Don’t be fooled. Trump’s minions love this type of distraction. It’s their version of “SQUIRREL!!”

I wasn’t sure where to drop this into this thread. It’s about Avenatti and Cohen’s lawyer going at it on CNN for almost a half hour.

Loved the caption on video feed,

“We watched this 26-minute interview, so you don’t have to.”

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Why?

I’m sure you are already aware of this. It just felt good to say.

The pool of acceptable civil servants is significantly smaller.

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About an hour ago I came from a physician’s waiting room where I was a captive audience for Fox News for about 45 min.
That is the longest by far and away I’ve been in front of a Fox newscast. I’ve been a student of propaganda since high school. Their news writers are masterly propagandists to be sure.
They use a straw man for the premise of virtually every question put to a guest. They had a token Dem when I watched – er, listened as I could not watch the blondes.
They brought Obama into it, too, completely without relevance.
The token Dem was shut down right away with an untrue or half-true statement.
Watch this every day exclusively and it’s easy to see how the Fox watchers live in an alternate reality.

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‘Tell us counselor, have you now or have you ever read the works of Saul Alinsky?’

Shay-Shay also implied he was a crook by saying that the $130k was paid to him and asking if he had passed the money on to Ms. Daniels. He shot her down on that one too by noting it was Ms. Daniels’ previous lawyer who was involved In the money exchange.

I’m pretty sure Shay-Shay’s “audience” only “heard” her “gotcha” question. You will now hear from the Right-wing echo chamber how Daniels’ lawyer kept the money for himself.

:woman_facepalming::rage:

And your point is?

I have a deep distaste for greed, specially when coming from lawyers like Avenatti that contribute nothing to society.

If this Stormy Daniels deal was happening to someone that I like I would be outraged. After all the woman has already been paid twice. But since it’s happening to Trump and Cohen I find myself laughing.

Greed aside, is Stormy Daniels helping to educate the public–especially those whose heads have still been in the sand–about the kind of person Trump is? Yes. So her lawyer is performing a socially desirable act.

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The lawyer is not an opponent in a political sense. But isn’t it OK to ask whether Stormy Daniels (registered Republican since 2010, under her real name) is acting out of some political motive? Maybe she’s a never-Trumper. And even if she’s in it only for the dough, what’s wrong with asking her lawyer if he has reasons other than a fee for representing her? I represent at least some of my clients for reasons other than fees (I don’t like bullies).

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It’s a valid point, however…
Stormy and her lawyer’s actions could just as efficiently be explained wholly in terms of seeking publicity and the benefits that flow from it. Regardless, I don’t think that it’s relevant in assessing the evidence that they present – I think, particularly in this case, that it’s crucial to keep the message separate from the messenger.
My impression is that one of the Republican strategies in defending Drumpf (whose campaign’s guilt I do not doubt) is to attempt to impugn the motivations of the investigators and, from there, to fallaciously attack the evidence using a poisoned tree and fruit analogy (as we’ve already seen with the Steele dossier.) To proceed from the statement “didn’t like Trump” to ‘behaved corruptly’ would, ideally, require proof that the actor’s deeds were influenced by their disposition towards the candidate. I don’t think that that’s ever going to happen here in any definitive way. Rather, I expect these “findings” will be used for political theater and as the sources of pretexts for other actions (i.e., shutting down the Mueller investigation.)
The long and the short of it is that pulling up the principals’ political affiliations is a strategy for muddying the waters (which will, here, form the basis of an argument for guilt by association) and distracting from the conclusions indicated by the evidence.
It also seems to me that there’s a tremendous, and protected, underlying hypocrisy here: the politics of Drumpf’s accusers can be made an issue while that of his defenders (invariably Republicans with a clear interest in the outcome of these investigations) is somehow not open to the same kind of questioning.

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