Politics

Two Trump Lawyers Were ‘Overheard’ Dishing On Russia. Was It An Accident, Or A Leak?

Screen Shot 2017-09-18 at 2.58.32 PM

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Kevin Daley Supreme Court correspondent
Font Size:

Two of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers discussed intimate details of the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election over lunch at a D.C. steakhouse — and a New York Times reporter happened to overhear it.

Though Washington has matured from an unremarkable backwater to a thriving professional and cultural center, in many ways it is still a small town. Social circles regularly cross partisan or professional lines, and the restaurants and bars concentrated near government offices often leave journalists, consultants, and well-placed officials in close proximity to one another.

Nonetheless, the origin of this story is truly bizarre — perhaps too bizarre to be believed.

The posture of the story as presented by the Times is this: Trump lawyers Ty Cobb and John Dowd were eating lunch at BLT Steak on I Street, just one block from the White House. During the meal, Cobb criticized White House counsel Don McGahn’s reluctance to furnish certain documents for special counsel Robert Mueller. He further revealed that McGahn has secured a trove of documents in a safe. And all the while, Times reporter Ken Vogel was seated immediately next to the pair who, by Vogel’s description, affected a “casual and loud” tone.

It’s entirely possible that this is precisely what happened. Though Vogel had a fairly significant profile at Politico, he is new to the Times and perhaps unknown to west wing lawyers like Cobb and Dowd. Nor is it hard to believe that two older men would adopt a loud tenor over steaks.

But it’s still odd, for these reasons:

In the first place, BLT Steak is immediately next to the Times’ Washington bureau. There’s a reasonable chance of spotting a Times reporter there on any given day. This alone should encourage two lawyers advising a high-profile client through a sensitive matter to be wary.

Second, it’s genuinely surprising that Dowd and Cobb wouldn’t recognize Vogel. Over the course of a decade at Politico, he refined a range of skills useful for tracking the confluence of money and political influence. It’s likely he was brought to the Times precisely to apply those skills against Trump and his businesses. In recent months, he has written high-profile pieces directly relevant to the Russia probe, including stories about Kremlin-aligned consultants and lawyers in the Trump orbit now under Mueller’s scrutiny, and assisted on a lengthy story concerning White House intrigue. In short, Vogel is a newsman of whom Dowd and Cobb should be aware.

Third, it’s hard — maybe impossible — to believe two lawyers of their caliber could be so indiscreet. The prospect of two attorneys openly holding forth about documents sealed in a safe by the White House counsel which could be relevant to a wide-ranging federal inquiry implicating their client, the president of the United States, in a downtown restaurant burgeoning with political professionals, lobbyists, and reporters is a new frontier in credulousness.

Lawyers bound by confidentiality are precluded from discussing such details with any party. Breaking confidentially, even unwittingly, can trigger serious professional sanctions. The duty is treated with utmost solemnity by all lawyers, such that many will not discuss even ordinary matters under the most general privilege in public settings like elevators and lobbies. It is hard to overstate the zeal with which lawyers treat this obligation. That Cobb and Dowd would fail to observe this sacred tenet of law practice could simply be an unprecedented display of rank incompetence that should seriously disturb the White House. Or it could be too outrageous a proposition to accept.

In sum, we are asked to believe that two of Washington’s finest white collar litigators decided to lunch at a restaurant next to the Times’ Washington bureau, during which time they loudly and clearly discussed a delicate matter they had an ethical obligation to conceal, in the presence of a fairly prominent reporter they didn’t recognize.

One could be forgiven their skepticism. One would be justified in thinking this was less an accidental disclosure and more a creative new manner of leaking.

Follow Kevin on Twitter

Send tips to kevin@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel