… Finally, on Monday — after Mr. Pierce had still failed to emerge — the government got involved. Federal prosecutors issued letters to several judges in 17 Capitol riot cases, informing them that no one in the Justice Department had heard from Mr. Pierce in a week and that “multiple” phone numbers for his law firm appeared to have been disconnected.
With Pierce possibly turning to ghosting as a legal tactic, his clients are now in a peculiar legal limbo. What makes it even more bizarre is the associate attempting to handle matters in Pierce’s absence has some… issues.
…prosecutors did express concern in their letters filed on Monday about the young associate, Ryan Joseph Marshall, who has been standing in for Mr. Pierce at the hearings he has missed.For one thing, Mr. Marshall is not a licensed lawyer, prosecutors said, and has taken actions on behalf of clients “that he is not permitted” to take. Moreover, they went on, it remains unclear if and when Mr. Marshall will be able to get his law license given that he is under indictment in two criminal cases accusing him of corruption, theft and fraud in Pennsylvania.
Pierce has made a specialty of defending right wing clients — although one wonders why they would go to him based on his performance to date. He was representing Kyle Rittenhouse for a time, but was fired over financial matters and questionable actions.
He was working with Lin Wood — who has been involved with Trump’s efforts to get the 2020 election overturned; Wood has problems of his own, according to Alison Durkee at Forbes.
…The state bar is investigating whether Wood violated multiple professional conduct rules after the election, as he brought multiple lawsuits challenging the presidential election results and spread baseless conspiracy theories online involving such figures as former Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts.
The bar asked Wood to undergo a mental health evaluation as part of that investigation, as the organization’s rules state “mental illness, cognitive impairment, alcohol abuse, or substance abuse, to the extent of impairing competency as a lawyer” are grounds for being disbarred.
Other clients have fired Pierce as well, for bad practices and poor service. He has conflict of interests between several of the many clients he is supposed to be representing. …
… Pierce’s legal work, which includes his firm representing everyone from Kyle Rittenhouse to Rudy Giuliani, has at times been overshadowed by personal drama. As our colleague Samantha Michaels has written in-depth, Pierce was previously sued by a former colleague for wrongful termination, while at the same time he fought a messy custody battle in which he was accused of threatening his ex-wife while claiming that God was working in his favor…
Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy finally found something about Jan. 6 he will never forget: Telecom companies that turn over the phone records of GOP lawmakers to the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol siege.
“If these companies comply with the Democrat order to turn over private information, they are in violation of federal law and subject to losing their ability to operate in the United States,” McCarthy said in a statement Tuesday. “A Republican majority will not forget,“ he added.
Naturally, McCarthy doesn’t exactly have a handle on the facts. It’s not just Democrats, since the committee is bipartisan; nothing has been ordered yet, the panel simply asked some 30 telecom and social media companies to preserve the records of Donald Trump, his family members, and his GOP allies; and finally, there’s nothing unlawful about complying with a congressional subpoena. In fact, if the companies were subpoenaed, they would be legally bound to respond. …
The Spanish Main and Caribbean Pirate Havens c. 1670
A map illustrating the routes of the Treasure Fleet (the New Spain and the Terra Firma Fleet) alongside the Spanish Main (the parts of the Spanish Empire on the mainland of the Americas with coastlines on the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico) and the islands in the Caribbean (Spanish West Indies). It also depicts the most notorious havens of the buccaneers and pirates that prayed on merchant shipping and the flow of Spanish treasure from the region.
Max Renn, owner of a small cable television station, captures images of tortured and dead people. Soon, he discovers that the broadcast is called Videodrome, is generated in Pittsburgh and is much more than a morbid show. It is an experiment that uses television to permanently alter people’s perceptions, causing serious damage to the brain.
VIDEODROME (1983) dir. David Cronenberg
