Quoted

January 28th, 2022

John B. Harris quoted in The Hill on January 6 Selection Committee Subpoena

Ethics & Professional Responsibility Litigation Partner John B. Harris was quoted in the article, “Jan. 6 Panel's Subpoena furthers Complications for Rudy Giuliani, DOJ” published by The Hill. The article discusses the January 6 Selection Committee’s subpoena of Giuliani and other lawyers who pushed the Trump agenda by denying the election results of Joe Biden’s win. John discussed the types of claims Mr. Giuliani might assert to avoid the subpoena – including attorney-client privilege.

“Stripping aside all of the other issues and all of the concerns that the committee has, the idea that there was actually legal advice that was being rendered here or that these discussions could have been privileged, I think that that is colorable depending on a lot of other facts,” said Harris, adding that “[a] memo about what the Vice President’s rights, duties and obligations are with respect to certification — that sounds to me like a kind of classic legal research and that you could absolutely give it to your client and not necessarily believe that you were committing a crime or fraud. It’s a legal issue that somebody like the president could have been entitled to know.”

John pointed out that with an attorney-client privilege claim, “You never know what sort of sympathetic ear you’re going to get if you’re challenging a subpoena so you probably spin the wheel and see what happens. . . .He could get an amenable judge.”

John concluded: “So I assume that’s going to be how they approach this — that ‘We didn’t know and we don’t know that this was an illegal thing. We thought that this was a perfectly appropriate use of our legal skills.’ And how that flies eventually, who knows, but it’s going to take a long time to resolve.”

Read the article here. (Behind paywall)