Stefan Passantino
speaker
273 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Stefan Passantino’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Trump, we've just come in. I had no idea that Comey was having interviews with Mike Flynn recently. You know, at the same time, I had no idea this was happening, but I thought, well, we're all on the same team. Let me just invite all of the NSC folks in for the same briefing that I'm doing for the staff because we're all on the same team.
And so literally I do these briefings and I get phone calls two days later from the Washington Post saying, we have three people who are in your briefing who all said you said X and that this is this horrible thing for Trump. And I said, what? That's A, not true. Why would three people randomly select you, Washington Post reporter, to tell the exact same story to?
This kind of sounds like an op against the Trump administration. It was going to highlight, it was something that was not going to paint Trump in a fair light that the ethics lawyer had said, whatever the rules were. And that's when I realized...
We're not all on the same team here, that there's this operation that's going on, and there's a real sort of psychic disconnect for me because I had tremendous respect for these—I had tremendous respect for the FBI and the DOJ, and I have to say in all candor with respect to me— As far as I can tell, they've been honorable in everything they've done with respect to me.
But what you see on TV, there's a lack of trust. And my children, my children's friends, have zero institutional faith in these organizations that I grew up revering.
No, they were outside of the D.C. bubble. I left... D.C., you know, sometime after I graduated high school, but still sort of keep up. And I practice out of D.C. That's where I live. I go there. That's where I work. That's my life. But it's a much different core philosophy. It's a different view of how these institutions operate. And then
One of the things that if Trump were to win that really needs to happen is we need to restore these institutions, the faith in these institutions that if State Department is doing something, if the intel agencies are doing something, that they're doing it in the interest of the public. We can't have the... 51 intel officers suppressing. We can't have that happening anymore.
I mean, that's one of the things that just, you know, for me, what's changed me is I'm a lawyer. The legal institution is of prime importance to me. We cannot be subjecting lawyers to attack because of who they represent. That's undemocratic. That's unconstitutional. We can't have a philosophy where you kill all of the lawyers for one side.
This whole notion of legal warfare that we are going to intimidate people against representing disfavored political parties under threat of disbarment, that has to change. And that's something that I'm pretty passionate about. And that's something that's sort of my... Life mission now, to the extent I'm surviving all of this, we just have to fix these institutions.
We have to return them to what they had.
So, I mean, you are the first person who's wanted to hear my story. So just getting the facts out. I mean, this has been two years and I have spoken to so many reporters. And I said, you don't have to believe a word I say. Just read the transcript. It's all sitting right there. Nobody wants to touch it. Nobody's ever wanted to report it.
It's not newsworthy. Exactly. And so getting the word out is important. But I've been really blessed to be working with the America First Legal, which they recognize we can't have a functioning democracy if lawyers are operating under this culture of fear.
I think you're the ones who coined the phrase, it's a culture of fear that nobody wants to raise their head above the waterline for fear that they're going to be the one who get popped off. And it's very disconcerting. knowing that we have an election coming up where everyone is determined to have rule of law enforced.
And the only way rule of law is enforced and people have faith in democracy, faith in the integrity of our elections, is if they know that there's going to be true accountability on both sides of the aisle. that the rules are going to be followed, and you cannot have rules in democracy being followed unless you have lawyers to help navigate.
And today, as we speak, there's an active, ongoing effort to intimidate Republican lawyers from engaging in any of this conduct for fear of getting disbarred, for fear of getting kicked out of their law firms, for fear of being banished from polite society in the legal circles. I mean, I certainly received...
bar complaint by 60-some prominent members of the bar and prominent members of legal academia.
Oh, I've never met any of them ever. I mean, this was... No. But I am now filing bar complaints. I'm doing what little I can do to create some accountability and transparency. Clearly, if it's just me, I will be squished again as quickly and easily as I was squished the first time.
But I have a little window to maybe try to create some awareness that we can't go on as a society where not everybody has the right to effective lawyers. And I have to say, one of the things that's been really gratifying of this whole experience, I mean, I have a lot of clients and...
A lot of clients who I represent would have had every opportunity to distance themselves from me for their own personal gain. I mean, I've represented Newton Callista Gingrich since 1998. I've represented a number... Senator Kelly Loeffler, Herschel Walker, a lot of corporate groups who I won't name because if I name them, that'll cause them harm, just the fact that they're associated with me.
But they could have left me out of political expedience. And you learn who your friends are. None of them did. They stuck with me, said, we know you, we know your core. Even though there's a risk to us in associating with you as our lawyer, we're going to stand by you. Now, there are a lot of people who didn't do that. A lot of people said, you're too hot.
Showing 241–260 of 273 · page 13 of 14
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