A conflict of interest between clients

I had written about some of the nasty guy’s co-conspirators complaining he and the MAGA crowd were not helping out with paying legal fees. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed a case in which who pays the legal fees is more of a problem than a help. This isn’t the case about the conspiracy to overthrow the election. It’s about the documents hidden at the Florida resort. The main character is Yuscil Taveras, head of IT operations at the resort. He’s the one identified as “Trump Employee 4.” He denied knowing how the security camera recordings were deleted or lost. After Taveras testified before the grand jury. Three months later he was informed he’s the target of investigation. After that Taveras said the earlier statement was a lie. Why did he change his tune? Sumner suggested it was because Taveras changed lawyers. His original lawyer also represented the nasty guy, personal aide Walt Nauta, and others. So Taveras originally lied to protect this lawyer’s other clients. But when he became a target that didn’t sit so well. His lawyer gave bad advice because whatever he said could bring more charges to the lawyer’s other clients. So he asked the court for another lawyer. And spilled the beans. That’s why in this case the special counsel added more charges to his indictments of the nasty guy and his other partners in crime. In this case the nasty guy provided the lawyers and paid the legal fees. But those lawyers had conflicts of interest amongst their clients and with the guy paying the fees. I started hearing this bit of news yesterday afternoon. I noticed how carefully reporters were choosing their words. An Associated Press article posted on Kos said as much as the radio reports. A plane crashed in Russia yesterday, killing all ten people on board. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group and the leader of the attempted and disbanded Russia coup a while back, was on the passenger list. But saying he was on the passenger list does not say he was actually on the plane and therefore now dead. Russia is saying he was on board. But we know how much Russian media lies. And we also know how much Putin likes revenge and the many stories of high level officials falling from windows. Not to much of a stretch to think he made sure the plane crashed. In a Ukraine update Kos of Kos discussed all the possible scenarios of maybe Prigozhin is still alive or Putin murdered him. The crash is of a nature that DNA tests would be required to verify any remains.

But really, there are two obvious possibilities: Either Putin killed Prigozhin to settle the score from the failed coup, or Prigozhin faked his death to hide from Putin.

Then there are those (the ones who think the source of all evil is the US) who pulled the CIA into the mess. But why pull in the CIA when Putin eliminating the guy who launched a coup against him is a much more obvious scenario? And theories get even stranger from there. In the rest of his Ukraine update Kos discussed Bakhmut, the little town of no importance that Russia (and Progozhin’s mercenaries) took nine months to capture. It made little sense for Russia to spend so much effort to take the town. Now that Russia has taken it and not pushing any farther Ukraine seems to be expending a lot of manpower to take it back. And that also doesn’t seem to be worth the effort. NATO generals have noticed and apparently told Ukraine to forget Bakhmut. There’s nothing of value there to liberate and Ukraine needs to focus on what does matter, that comprehensive counteroffensive. It appears Ukraine is listening. As for that counteroffensive, there are four lines of Russian defenses for Ukraine to get through to liberate Tokmak, the city Russia turned into a logistics hub. By liberating Robotyne Ukraine is now through the first line. Just south of Robotyne is a ridge. From that ridge it is all downhill to Tokmak. That gave RO37 of the Kos community a chance to explain the advantage of fighting from the higher elevation. A review of a few famous battles that included hills show the change in elevation doesn’t have to be much. The famous hill battles include Bunker Hill, Pratzen Heights near Austerlitz (Napoleon), Little Round Top at Gettysburg, Sugar Loaf Hill on Okinawa, and Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima, which also had a giant underground fortress. The advantage of elevation is the guy at the top has only his head exposed to the guy down below, and the one below has his whole body exposed to the guy at the top. Last Sunday Kos posted photos of Zelenskyy visiting NATO countries Netherlands and Denmark to receive donations of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. That’s great! Then Kos got into the challenges. Not enough potential pilots know English and training manuals haven’t been translated. Why didn’t they start with the English training when Zelenskyy first asked about acquiring the planes? Then there is logistics, which has been discussed many times during the war. And that comes down to each plane needs 50 personnel to maintain and operate it. Add to that every different kind of equipment Ukraine is getting from other countries, each with its own logistical needs. It is complicated, hard, and can’t be done all at once. Then there is the expense. An F-16 costs $27,000 per hour to fly. Then each hour takes 17 hours of maintenance. A pundit roundup by Chitown Kev for Kos includes quotes by Sethu Pradeep of Indian Express discussing the achievement by the Indian Space Research Organisation of landing a spacecraft near the south pole of the moon. India is only the fourth nation to land a spacecraft on the moon (Russia just crashed one) and the first to land at the south pole. The craft includes a rover that will soon begin scientific experiments. Back to that crashed plane... In the comments of that roundup is a cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz with the words, “Fly Putin Airlines, when a window’s not enough.” A later AP article does not confirm Prigozhin is among the dead. It does say that the other six passengers were in the Wagner leadership. There were also three crew who died. All of the leadership on one flight means someone screwed up on security. The flight was headed towards St. Petersburg, where Wagner has its headquarters. It crashed because there was an explosive on board. There Progozhin supporters treated the news as his death, creating a memorial outside the building.