If
Stefan
Passantino
wants
to
be
remembered
for
something
other
than
his
disastrous
representation
of
Cassidy
Hutchinson,
he
could
start
by
shutting
up
about
it.
The
former
Trump
ethics
lawyer
sued
MSNBC
commentator
Andrew
Weissman
for
defamation
and
filed
a bar
complaint
against
former
Rep.
Liz
Cheney
for
supposedly
violating
bar
rules
by
communicating
with
Hutchinson
when
she
was
represented
by
counsel
during
the
January
6
Committee
investigations.
This
would
be
a
slam
dunk
if
Cheney
had
been
acting
as
a
prosecutor
or
opposing
counsel,
and
if
a
congressional
investigation
were
actual
litigation.
(Nope!)
Passantino
also
sued
Congress
for
invasion
of
privacy
and
civil
conspiracy,
because
…
LOL
WTF?
It
makes
a
(very)
little
more
sense
when
you
check
the
docket
and
realize
that
Passantino
is
represented
by
Jesse
Binnall,
the
MAGAworld
lawyer
hired
for
pointless
windmill
tilts
on
behalf
of
such
luminaries
as
former
North
Carolina
Lt.
Gov.
Mark
“Minisoldr”
Robinson,
Mike
Flynn,
Devin
Nunes,
Sidney
Powell,
and
even
the
current
president.
The
complaint
was
Binnall’s
standard
fare:
indignant
whinging
grafted
onto
a
bizarre
legal
theory.
He
says
that
the
Committee
leaked
the
transcripts
of
Hutchinson’s
testimony
—
given
after
she’d
fired
Passantino
and
replaced
him
with
Jody
Hunt,
the
former
head
of
the
DOJ’s
Civil
Division
—
to
CNN
before
releasing
them
to
the
general
public.
In
his
telling,
“The
Committee
deliberately
leaked
information
to
news
media,
immediately
before
it
would
have
quietly
become
public,
in
order
to
bring
attention
to
private
facts
and,
in
doing
so,
damage
Mr.
Passantino,”
resulting
in
Passantino
being
fired
from
Michael
Best.
And
that
is
a
civil
conspiracy
with
CNN,
whom
he
did
not
sue
for
…
reasons.
Why
he
thinks
the
transcript
would
have
garnered
no
public
attention,
or
why
he
might
have
an
interest
in
the
compelled
testimony
of
his
former
client,
is
left
as
an
exercise
for
the
reader.
The
exercise
for
Judge
Eleanor
Ross
of
the
Northern
District
of
Georgia
was
to
determine
what
to
do
with
this
dumb
turkey
of
a
case.
And
the
answer
was
to
yeet
it
into
the
sun.
As
flagged
by
Jerry
Lambe
at
Law
&
Crime,
the
court dismissed
the
complaint
last
week
for
failing
to
satisfy
one
of
the
exceptions
to
sovereign
immunity
that
would
have
gotten
around
the
Federal
Tort
Claims
Act
(FTCA).
Because,
while
styling
this
public
hissy
fit
as
a
conspiracy
and
invasion
of
privacy
claim,
everything
that
Passantino
and
Binnall
complained
about
was
damage
from
publication.
And
the
FTCA
doesn’t
countenance
libelslander
lawsuits
against
the
government.
Womp
womp.
Passantino
attempts
to
sidestep
§
2680(h)’s
libel/slander
exception
by
arguing
that
the
harm
alleged
in
the
Complaint
derives
not
from
the
Committee’s
false
statements
about
him,
but
from
the
Committee
releasing
his
“private
information.”
That
private
information,
according
to
Passantino,
consists
of
privileged
“internal
discussions”
with
Hutchinson
that
the
Committee
purportedly
leaked
to
the
media.
The
problem
with
Passantino’s
argument
is
that
if
the
Committee’s
defamatory
statements
are
set
aside,
the
Complaint
fails
to
establish
a
connection
between
the
“internal
discussions”
about
Passantino’s
“private
information”
and
the
harm
alleged
in
the
Complaint.
And
without
that
connection,
there
is
no
valid
FTCA
claim.
The
court
was
similarly
flummoxed
as
to
what
possible
“private
fact”
could
have
been
disclosed
by
quoting
the
actual
words
of
Passantino’s
former
client.
“The
Court
is
hard
pressed
to
see
how
an
attorney’s
advice
to
his
client
not
to
lie
to
Congress
is
a
‘private
fact’
in
any
sense,”
she
wrote.
“But
yet
again,
Passantino
leaves
the
United
States
and
this
Court
guessing
as
to
what
private
information
was
exchanged
during
those
conversations.”
And
if
there’s
no
invasion
of
privacy
claim,
the
conspiracy
claim
falls,
too
—
you
can
hardly
conspire
to
commit
a
non-crime.
Which
means
that
Binnall
can
chalk
up
another
fabulous
victory!
Passantino
v.
US
[Docket
via
Court
Listener]
Liz
Dye lives
in
Baltimore
where
she
produces
the
Law
and
Chaos substack and podcast.