All right, Lawyer talk off the record, on the air.

Back with another Circle 270 follow up question.

A great question.

We should have addressed this anyway.

We just recorded an episode about Ghislaine Maxwell and whether she's going to get pardoned and therefore testify in Congress.

Check it out.

Lots of good stuff there.

But Brett, our producer at Circle270 Media, had a follow up question or sort of made some comments about, well, the DOJ would really want to have to know what she's going to say.

And it was a good point.

The point he was making is basically this.

The prosecutors or the Department of Justice would want to weigh her responsibility against these other huge targets that still may be out there.

Or maybe, generally speaking, the quest for knowledge about what was really going on in the Epstein world.

And it got me thinking, there is a mechanism for this.

So we're not just shooting at the.

We're not just shooting in the dark.

So if you're Maxwell or Maxwell's lawyers, and you know, spoiler alert, I think this has already happened with her.

Yeah, but if you're Maxwell and Maxwell's lawyers and you want to try to gain an advantage by providing or by testifying now and you want to gain an advantage in your case, you would say, hey, look, U.S. attorney, I'll help you get others, but you have to let me out of prison early or you have to give me a deal.

If you're the U.S. attorney, what do you say?

I would say yes.

Well, before you'd say yes, you'd want.

To know, oh, yeah, who are the people?

How much chicken is on the bone here?

How much chicken is on the bone?

And then if you're her lawyer, what are you going to say?

There's a good amount of chicken, I swear.

I promise.

Or I'm going to give at least a list or something.

Yeah, but then you're incriminating yourself by providing this information.

I'm not saying this is a specific list or details of it.

I'm just saying here's the ballpark area of people.

Yeah, but you're making admissions on behalf of your client that could be used against her through a U.S. attorney.

This is difficult, all right?

I'm also, I'm not an experienced attorney.

They don't teach us in law school.

I'm making a point here.

We'll get a little Troy off the hook.

There's a process for this.

And in Ohio, in our federal court system, in my practice, we call it a proffer letter.

Often it is referred to as a Queen for a day letter throughout the country.

What the heck is a Queen for a Day letter?

It means you're queen for a day.

Here's how it works.

My client has information that he wants to share with the government in order to curry some sort of favor in his case.

So he wants to say, look, government, I'll tell you everything I know, but you have to give me a better deal.

Whatever that, or even if it's great information, you have to agree not to prosecute me.

And Mr. U.S. attorney is going to say, well, what does your client know?

And I'm going to say, I can't tell you because you're going to use it against him.

If I tell you, he's going to be prosecuted for that stuff.

U.S. attorney says, well, I can't do anything until I know what your client's going to say, well, I can't give you the information until I know what you're going to do.

End you up in this impasse.

So.

So we've created this thing called a Queen for a day letter where you, the U.S. attorney, you're going to send me a letter and it's going to say, hello, defense lawyer.

Dear defense Lawyer, I hereby agree that if your client comes in and provides truthful information about the subject matter we've been discussing, insert that there, then I will agree not to use that information against your client to prosecute him.

I will agree that if he provides that, if we agree he's truthful and we're not going to use his statements against him, we can, however, make derivative use of that information.

What the heck does derivative means?

It means if I tell, if my client says something.

Yeah.

We are engaged in a year, a decade long conspiracy with Troy out in Colorado because Troy was growing weed and I was importing it back and forth.

All these things are overgrounded on some sort of case I've worked on.

But I'm not going.

Troy's gonna be.

I had an agreement with Troy out in Colorado and I was taking all the dope he could grow and I was selling it here and I was kicking back money to Troy and we would act like we were going out camping for elk hunting once a year and I would pack it all in my camper and.

And that's when we would do the exchanges or whatever it would be.

I made that part up.

So the police now know this and they can't use that information against my client because my client said it during the proffer protection or the Queen for a Day protection.

But let's say they go out to Colorado and they start interviewing other people and they say, oh, yeah, I know Troy.

In fact, I used to buy weed from Troy.

And then they go talk to Troy and Troy says, yeah, you got me.

You know, my dad always said I should cooperate with the police.

So turns out I've been growing lots of pot over the years, and I've been shipping it back to Ohio.

And I've been working with Mr. Palmer's client for years, doing that, you know, take my penance.

Well, the Queen for a Day letter does not protect my client against you testifying against him.

I just shot us both in the foot, fool.

Because you violated the number one rule, don't talk to the police.

I know.

So they can prosecute my client.

They can make derivative use of the evidence, develop enough of that evidence, and then prosecute my client for that conduct.

But they can't just go into court and say, Mr. Palmer's client admitted to this crime, therefore find him guilty.

He admitted it on such and such a date at such and such a time at the U.S. attorney's office or even his own conference room where he was confessing to these crimes.

Now, as a practical matter, the derivative use stuff typically doesn't happen.

As a practical matter, even though it's not in writing, there's sort of an understanding, unenforceable, as it were, that the police aren't going to prosecute my client for the stuff he's talking about.

Typically, by then, I have had some conversations.

I say, look, he's going to tell you about all sorts of stuff.

Are we done?

Is this indictment it?

And they will say, yeah, just tell him to tell the truth.

And this is it.

Now, they don't put it always in writing, and there's again, there's always playing the choice behind the scenes when representing folks, but it's important to sort of have this understanding of what's going on.

But I never tell my clients that.

I say, look, here's what the rule is.

Here's what it is.

We hope that you won't be prosecuted for anything more.

And they have told me, negotiating this, that it's likely to be the case, but they always want an out also.

So if you tell them you committed a murder, that's going to be excluded from the Queen for a Day letter, all right?

They're going to use that against you, and there's going to be language for that kind of stuff in there.

All right, back to the question Maxwell, I believe, is already proffered.

She's already had a Queen for a Day letter.

So Maxwell has enjoyed, on some level, Queen for a Day protection.

And presumably she went into the DOJ and provided all sorts of or answered their questions about whatever they had about Epstein.

I do not know if this is included in the Epstein dump.

The file dump.

I'm guessing it's not, but maybe it is.

I feel like if it was, somebody would have already found it.

I would think we'd been hearing about it.

But I'm fairly certain that Maxwell proffered that she shared information to curry whatever favor she could curry from the government, and that was that, and she resolved her case.

This is different than a pardon.

It's different than immunity.

But.

But she's had a Queen for a Day letter.

Now this means back to the Circle 270 follow up.

I don't think the Department of Justice is necessarily flying on instruments here or blind.

I think they have some idea of what she knows because they've already proffered her.

Or maybe it is the case that they limited the scope of the proffer to certain things and they want to know more.

I don't know.

But there's still a mechanism.

If I'm representing Maxwell and I'm trying to shorten her time in prison, I would be using these bargaining chips the best I could to get to take advantage of that.

So Maxwell has been a queen for the day.

I guess you could be too, if you get charged with crimes.

You want to be a snitch.

Anyway, this is Lawyer Talk podcast, or check us out LawyerTalkPodcast.com if you've got a question.

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