By Edgar J. Steele

Part I – No Attorney-Client Privilege

As you know, I have been serializing parts of my upcoming book, “Evil Edgar,” to my list on the internet, as I have been writing it. We have just finished up (most of) “Sex, Lies and Audiotape,” a chapter about those phony recordings and how my experts were prohibited by the judge from proving them false.

Next up (or so I intended): “Love and Other Four-Letter Words,” about the Russian bride scam I was investigating and the possible involvement of the “Russian Mafia” in my takedown. I have that entire chapter almost done. The very recent, stupefying dismissal by the Idaho Supreme Court of my ethics complaint against the lead prosecutor in my show trial forces me to take the basis of that complaint up now, however.

Government Misconduct

In my time, I have been witness to some incredible legal railroad jobs of the politically incorrect. Nobody ever really believes me when I tell them how bad things have gotten in America, thinking I must be wrong or, at least, exaggerating. I’ve gotten used to the disbelief, the total unwillingness of people to believe our government actually would do the things to which I have been witness in my career. I shake my head, in awe of the overwhelming nature of the con job done by all of America’s media in fostering such naïve beliefs.

Now comes what likely is the final case of my career: my own. Never have I seen such overarching brazenness on the part of our government. Never have I seen so many different, outrageously illegal gambits employed in a single case.

Are they pulling out all the stops because I’m a lawyer? Or, perhaps it just takes a lawyer on the hot seat to see all that they do? Other trial lawyers tell me they’ve never seen anything like my case, so I have to believe there is something special going on.

Why me? The answer will become glaringly obvious as we go along, but remember that I always have promised that one day I will pull some real skeletons out of my closet, when I no longer need my bar licenses.

What’s that? You say I should already have written “Attorney for the Damned?” How do you know that I haven’t? Except for the last chapter, of course.

The Attorney-Client Non-Privilege

I have believed the attorney-client confidentiality privilege to be more sacrosanct, even, than that between doctor and patient or priest and penitent. Always. Until now.

The right to counsel, guaranteed by the US Constitution’s Sixth Amendment, is absolute. Talk to somebody else’s lawyer at a cocktail party about your legal problems and the privilege applies. Money need not change hands. Talk to your lawyer in the middle of a crowded Grand Central Station and the privilege applies. Yeah… right.

Here’s one of the things I have learned from a year in five different county jails: There is no inmate more naïve than a lawyer inmate. Because I knew the law and where all the boundary lines are drawn, I told myself I would do okay. I knew the government never would invade my attorney-client privilege. I was wrong.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Our government secretly and illegally recorded my “private” phone calls with lawyers at more than one jail.

Our government secretly and illegally opened more than one of my “confidential” letters to lawyers.

Our government even secretly and illegally listened into more than one of my “private” conversations with lawyers in the jail and Federal courthouse booths set aside for private conferences with lawyers.

How do I know all these thing if they were done secretly? Easy – the government told me, every step of the way; they repeatedly used the information they illegally obtained in prosecuting me.

No, really! I swear. Ask my lawyers. Ask my fellow inmates, all of whom have been surprised at the degree of my naiveté. Of course the government does all this and more. What did I expect?