General Flynn’s first set of attorneys were from the firm Covington. The DOJ’s Trisha Anderson went to work for Flynn’s attorney law firm while they were repping for General Flynn. Did Covington tell General Flynn about hiring one of the individuals at the DOJ involved in the Russia collusion sham?
Trisha Anderson is a member of Covington as a partner and joined the firm in September of 2018:
Anderson was deep in the Deep State at the FBI that worked on the coup attempt of President Trump. Epoch Times reported this on Anderson’s testimony in front of Congress only a month before she left for Covington:
A key player in the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Donald Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign was Trisha Anderson, who, at the time, was the No. 2 lawyer at the agency’s Office of General Counsel.
Despite having no specific experience in counterintelligence before coming to the FBI, Anderson was, in some manner, involved in virtually all of the significant events of the investigation.
Anderson told members of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees in August last year during closed-door testimony that she was one of only about 10 people who had known about the Trump–Russia investigation prior to its official opening.
A transcript of Anderson’s testimony, which was reviewed for this article, reveals that she had read all of the FBI’s FD302 forms detailing information that the author of the Steele dossier, former British spy Christopher Steele, had provided to high-ranking Department of Justice (DOJ) official Bruce Ohr.
Anderson also told lawmakers that she personally signed off on the original application for a warrant to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page without having read it. The FBI relied heavily on the unverified information in the Steele dossier—which was paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee—to obtain the FISA warrant.
Anderson also was part of a small group of FBI personnel who got to read then-FBI Director James Comey’s memos about conversations he had with President Donald Trump.
Covington also represented General Michael Flynn at the time that Anderson was hired. This indicates a conflict of interest for the firm and the question is whether General Flynn was ever notified of Anderson’s hiring.
In the legal field, one of the legal duties every lawyer must observe is to avoid conflicts of interest when it comes to their clients. In fact, if a lawyer represents a client knowing that there’s a conflict of interest, they can be disciplined by the state bar and sued by the client for legal malpractice.
Types of Attorney Conflicts of Interest
There are a variety of conflicts of interest that can prevent a lawyer from taking on a particular case. The conflict may occur between the prospective client and one of the attorney’s current or former clients. There can also be concerns if a client’s interests are in conflict with the lawyer’s professional or personal relationships. For example, if the client is looking to sue a particular business that happens to be owned by the lawyer’s brother-in-law, there’s a clear conflict of interest for the attorney. It’s also possible for there to be an issue if the potential client’s interests are at odds with the attorney’s own interests.
A conflict of interest can also occur at the law firm level. For example, even if an attorney working at a law firm didn’t personally work on a particular matter (because someone else at the firm handled it), if the attorney leaves the firm, he or she could still have a conflict of interest related to that matter based on the firm’s work.
Covington is currently already in hot water for representing General Flynn and not recusing itself earlier according to the Federalist:
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn faces the real possibility of jail time when he is sentenced at the end of this month in connection with the guilty plea he entered in 2017. But that plea appears to be tainted because his original lawyers had a conflict of interest that arose from their involvement in one of the offenses folded into the plea. The fallout from that conflict of interest appears to have created Flynn’s current predicament.
Robert Mueller’s Office of Special Counsel investigated Flynn for potential criminal charges that included 1) lying to the FBI about his conversation with the Russian ambassador while he was part of President Donald Trump’s national security transition team, and 2) making a false statement in his filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) for work he had allegedly done for the government of Turkey prior to the Nov. 8, 2016, election.
Covington and Burling, LLP, a prominent law firm, represented Flynn in the investigation and in plea negotiations. The firm also assisted him in preparing the allegedly false FARA filings.
Because Flynn was targeted for his FARA filing, Covington had a conflict in representing him since they assisted him in creating the FARA application in question.
