Richard Hibey Interview 11

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Oral History of Richard Hibey, Esq.
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is James Rocap, and the interviewee
is Richard Hibey. The interview took place in a conference room in the building of Dick Hibey’s
home on Cathedral Avenue on Wednesday, October 18, 2023. This is the eleventh interview.
MR. ROCAP: Good morning, Dick.
MR. HIBEY: Good morning, Jim.
MR. ROCAP: The last session, we discussed Mary Mapes and the Costin, Skeddle, and Bryant
representations. Today we’re going to focus on Sun Diamond, which is a D.C.-
centric case, David Geisen, which is another Toledo case, and then if we have
time, we’ll start talking about Paul Manafort and your relationship with him over
the years.
But before that, you and I noticed one chronological correction that we had
to make to the last session. We want to make clear that in 2002, prior to the time
you were representing Mary Mapes, you had moved from Winston and Strawn to
Miller and Chevalier. That leads me to the following question. What caused you
to move from Winston and Strawn to Miller in 2002?
MR. HIBEY: Conflicts. It seemed that there were a number of really good opportunities to be
retained by prospective clients, however, we couldn’t get past the detailed,
meticulous process of clearing conflicts before we could take on a particular case.
The conflicts question was submitted to a department at Winston that vetted every
potential case that came in the door. That was in Chicago, but it had a deleterious
effect on people such as myself who were not in Chicago. I just grew tired of that.
MR. ROCAP: I take it at Miller, of course, they’re going to be checking conflicts as well but the
process was more reasonable?
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MR. HIBEY: Miller didn’t have a thousand lawyers so the prospect of conflict mathematically
was less than Winston.
MR. ROCAP: Let’s move back to the time that you were at Winston here in D.C. and the
opportunity presented itself to represent a cooperative named Sun Diamond
Growers. Perhaps you can give a little bit of background on what that
representation was about. It involved an Independent Counsel investigation and so
on.
MR. HIBEY: An Independent Counsel was appointed to investigate the former Secretary of
Agriculture Mike Espy for his relationship to an agricultural cooperative situated
in northern California called Sun Diamond Growers.
MR. ROCAP: Who was the Independent Counsel?
MR. HIBEY: The Independent Counsel was a fellow named Don Smaltz. He was assisted by a.
young lawyer, Barry Coburn, and a staff of individuals I don’t know.
MR. ROCAP How did you get involved in that case? How did you come to represent Sun
Diamond?
MR. HIBEY: That’s a good question. I really need to have my memory refreshed on that
because I cannot for the life of me figure out how I got involved in representing
an agricultural cooperative situated in California.
MR. ROCAP: Although it makes sense if there’s an Independent Counsel investigation in D.C.,
and by this time you’d had a number of representations that would cause people to
think of you.
MR. HIBEY: There’s that. I’m just a little dim on how it came to me.
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MR. ROCAP: Let’s talk about the case itself. There was an indictment in June of 1996. This is
all from the public records. There were two parts to the indictment. There were
two transactions involving a charge of illegal gratuities to Mr. Espy himself.
There was a second set of transactions separate from the first involving alleged
illegal contributions and wire fraud to retire the campaign debt of Mr. Espy’s
brother, Henry. So there were really two completely separate sets of facts that
you had to deal with there. Who assisted you in the trial?
MR. HIBEY: Two Winston and Strawn lawyers, Eric Bloom and Chuck Klein. They did the
work that’s necessary in preparation of defense at trial. Eric later argued the case
in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbi, and then thereafter when
I was very much involved in trial in Toledo, I told Eric that if this case went to the
Supreme Court, I wanted him to argue it, and that’s what happened. This young
lawyer, his first case before the Supreme Court.
MR. ROCAP: Ultimately, he and you were successful in the Supreme Court.
MR. HIBEY: Eric was doing the heavy lifting because he was doing the arguing and the briefwriting,
and he got a wonderful 9-0 result.
MR. ROCAP: This was in the D.C. federal court before which judge?
MR. HIBEY: Judge Ricardo Urbina.
MR. ROCAP: Had you had dealings with Judge Urbina before?
MR. HIBEY: No, I hadn’t. I think he knew me, because what we had in common was we both
came out of the Legal Aid Agency for the District of Columbia. I did not
anticipate any unusual circumstances that would have made the case all the more
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difficult because of who the judge was and who I was. We had a relatively
uneventful trial.
MR. ROCAP: It went to trial pretty quickly I think in September of 1996, three or four months
later.
MR. HIBEY: Yes. I’ve seen that, and I for the life of me can’t remember why this thing was
fast-tracked. I just don’t have a recollection of it. What I do recall is in the main,
Barry Coburn was the prosecutor. I keep thinking Teddy Greenberg, a long-time
career assistant whom I knew, also participated in the trial of the case, but his
work seemed to be over the years more involved with the grand jury than he was
with the trial jury. So Barry Coburn did the main trial work.
MR. ROCAP: At trial, I think, at least with respect to the first set of transactions, the gratuities to
Secretary of Agriculture Espy directly, there was an acquittal on one count and a
conviction on the other, and then you pursued appeals successfully with respect to
that gratuity count. On the second set of transactions, which involved, for
purposes of today – it’s probably easiest just to call them a bundling scheme to
retire a campaign debt of Secretary Espy’s brother who had lost – there were
convictions on that and ultimately those were not overturned. Why don’t we talk a
little bit about the gratuities themselves, at least the procedural steps with respect
to the gratuities. So acquittal on one count, conviction on the other, and then you
all made a motion for judgment of acquittal on the grounds that the instructions
were improper. In the D.C. Circuit before Judge Williams and others, they agreed
with you that the instructions were not specific enough to support a conviction.
How did it get to the Supreme Court after that?
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MR. HIBEY: Special Counsel appealed, and cert was granted. We had no intention after the
circuit court opinion had come down of pursuing the matter any further, because
as I recall a fine which would be imposed on the cooperative was not very large.
So we were content to take the hit, which I think was about $37,000. That’s what
I think was the amount of the fine, and we figured it would cost more than that to
prosecute in appeal further.
What I found interesting, perhaps not altogether surprising given the
ambitious nature of the Independent Counsel in this case, was that they took it up,
and we had no choice but to defend ourselves, which we did.
MR. ROCAP: I think, if I’m correctly reading the Supreme Court’s decision from Justice Scalia,
seeking cert in the Supreme Court actually made it even worse for the
Independent Counsel, because they got an opinion that not only affirmed the U.S.
Court of Appeals decision but also tightened up the gratuity prosecution to say
that there had to be a specific intent to effect an official act as opposed to simply a
specific intent to influence someone in office. So there had to be a specific act
involved. Then they remanded it. What happened on remand after that? Did it go
any further?
MR. HIBEY: As I recall, it did in front of Judge Urbina who had to address whatever was left
after the opinions of the Supreme Court and the Circuit Court and to impose a fine
on the cooperative. That was an interesting experience because the judge,
whatever his reasons were, took the tack that under the Federal Sentencing
Guidelines, he could enhance the sentence because a public official who benefited
from the bundling contribution was Henry Espy’s brother, Mike Espy, the
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Secretary of Agriculture, and that he, Mike Espy, as Secretary of Agriculture, was
tenth in line to be the President of the United States, and that prominent place in
presidential succession warranted an upward departure from the guidelines to
some ridiculous sum.
MR. ROCAP: Which made a much higher potential fine, I take it?
MR. HIBEY: Yes.
MR. ROCAP: You challenged that on the first appeal?
MR. HIBEY: Absolutely.
MR. ROCAP: And the result there was favorable, I take it?
MR. HIBEY: Totally. So in the end, it cost Sun Diamond in fines about $37,000.
MR. ROCAP: I think there was another aspect of the sentencing that you challenged on appeal
where Judge Urbina had imposed reporting requirements on members of the
cooperative as opposed to the cooperative itself, which ultimately the court of
appeals said – you can’t do that. What do you remember about that?
MR. HIBEY: I have no memory of it.
MR. ROCAP: It was another part of the victory in a case that was pretty high-profile at the time.
MR. HIBEY: It was. The client was very happy with the result.
MR. ROCAP: Okay. I think that covers Sun Diamond, and that, as I said, occurred back in the
late 1990s while you were at Winston and Strawn. We ought to fast-forward to
another case from Toledo. Last time, we talked about Costin, Skeddle, and
Bryant, which was in Toledo, and then it seems like you were picking up another
place for you to try cases, in Toledo. And this was the David Geisen case.
MR. HIBEY: Yes.
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MR. ROCAP: This was when you were at Miller and Chevalier, and it started out in January
2006 with the indictment. Maybe you could just explain briefly how you got
involved in that case and generally speaking, what it was about.
MR. HIBEY: My recollection is that the NRC’s enforcement wing pressed for criminal charges
to be brought against David Geisen and two other people, one named Cook, and I
can’t remember the other one, for basically making false statements regarding the
safety status of the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant in the Toledo area. Davis-
Besse was represented by Morgan Lewis, and the litigation was in the hands of
Bill Gardner, one of the senior members of Morgan Lewis who was a trial lawyer.
He was responsible for staffing the problem. My good friend, Bill, asked me to
take on Dave Geisen, a senior member of the corporate entity that was responsible
for the nuclear power plant Davis-Besse.
So I undertook that representation. I was most ably assisted by Andy
Weiss, who has gone on to a wonderful career trying criminal cases.
MR. ROCAP: There were five counts involved. Mr. Cook and Mr. Geisen were tried together.
One thing that I noticed in just doing a little bit of research was that there was an
offer of a deferred prosecution, which I found to be unusual, that was made to
Mr. Geisen ahead of time. In other words, after the indictment, the NRC and the
U.S. Attorney offered a deferred prosecution if he would agree to the falsity of the
counts.
MR. HIBEY: Well you see, that had a consequence. If he did accept the deferred prosecution
offer, it would result in his not being able to participate in the nuclear power
industry for a period of I think five years. Dave was a righteous guy who had an
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acute sense of justice. He could not bring himself to agree that he did anything
wrong or that he’d made any false statements, so he refused the offer. I had no
trouble with that. So we went forward and tried the case.
MR. ROCAP: The case was tried the next year in October of 2007, and I think Mr. Cook and
Mr. Geisen both were co-defendants at that time. A third individual had been
severed out for a separate trial. But generally speaking, this is involving a nuclear
facility, not really in your wheelhouse. How did you get ready for that, and how
difficult was dealing with the more technical details of nuclear engineering and
safety and so on? How did that factor into your planning and your trial
performance?
MR. HIBEY: That was the playground we were in. The one thing about the work of being a
defense lawyer that was very attractive to me was the notion that on Day One I
could be involved in a question of procedure in the fruit and vegetable and
agricultural cooperative setting and then the next day be involved in nuclear
energy. And you had to be prepared to do a deep dive into whatever the subject
matter was and become “an expert” for that brief period of time that the issues
commanded your attention. That’s one of the magical things about the work. It
was required that I learn something about nuclear energy.
MR. ROCAP: I understand you had a skeptic in the household as to whether you would be able
to do that.
MR. HIBEY: That’s true. She was amazed.
MR. ROCAP: This is your wife, Mary Ellen?
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MR. HIBEY: Mary Ellen was amazed when she heard me talk to the next-door neighbor, who
had a PhD in nuclear physics, about certain nuclear power issues that undergird
the safety ramifications of this particular case. But what you do is what you have
to do. Get into it, understand it, rely on your experts, ask probing questions,
challenge what’s being said or accepting it based upon whatever the information
was that’s being shared with you.
So I never thought anything about the uniqueness of this subject matter
because what was I going to do, say, “Oh my goodness, I’m daunted, and I can’t
do this?” I’m afraid I was at that stage of my life where I thought I could do
anything, so it never occurred to me to be cowed by the NRC jargon or the
scientific implications of what was being discussed.
MR. ROCAP: At trial, you ended up having to either put on or cross examine witnesses on the
technical aspects of this, and in addition, I guess Mr. Geisen testified, so again,
that’s always a big decision whether to have your client testify at a defense trial.
What was your thinking there?
MR. HIBEY: My thinking was that he was utterly convinced of his innocence. He was a very
bright guy, and over time when we talked about the issues that affected him, he
held up very well. So it was not a heavy lift for me to suggest that he testify.
MR. ROCAP: At the end of trial, Mr. Cook was acquitted. Mr. Geisen was found guilty. You
made a motion for judgment of acquittal. What did the judge say at that point?
MR. HIBEY: I made the argument. He listened very carefully. He was a fine judge. By the time
I got to him, he was a chief judge.
MR. ROCAP: Judge Katz?
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MR. HIBEY: Yes. He described the issue before him to be decided, motion for judgment of
acquittal, as a very close case. I found that encouraging.
MR. ROCAP: When you got to sentencing, how did that go? What happened?
MR. HIBEY: It was a very interesting sentencing hearing. It took the entire morning for him to
decide what the sentence should be. The morning was filled with argument and
interaction between myself and Judge Katz, who had a wonderful judicial
temperament and was most conscientious in the trial of this case. I must say I was
not surprised because my prior experience ten years earlier, before another judge
of his court, was every bit as salutary as this one was with him.
The argument started out in the courtroom. I don’t remember exactly what
envelope I was pushing, but we ended up out of the courtroom and into the jury
room, which is behind the courtroom, and our discussion and my argument
continued. I think he was touched by the humanity of Dave, his sense of truth and
righteousness at trial. The judge was reminded of that during my argument, and it
seemed to have taken root as far as you could go, and that was to impose not an
incarceration sentence but a probationary one. I think I even convinced him to
shorten the period of probation. I can’t remember whether he gave him a modest
fine, but we all walked out of the courtroom that day. I didn’t leave my client in
the cell block. Then we appealed it.
MR. ROCAP: That’s not the end of the story by quite aways. There was also an administrative
proceeding going on within the confines of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
regarding Mr. Geisen’s ability to continue to practice as a licensed nuclear energy
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manager in this area, and you were involved in that proceeding. Maybe you could
describe a little bit about how that went.
MR. HIBEY: We represented Dave in a department proceeding in front of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. That meant that we would have an evidentiary hearing at
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before three administrative judicial officers.
That lasted several days.
MR. ROCAP: The issue here was debarment, whether they could enforce an employment ban in
the industry.
MR. HIBEY: It was a challenge to the evidence. To the extent the NRC staff could rely on the
conviction, they did, but we didn’t. We challenged it and turned it into a de novo
proceeding on the question of whether he could keep his status.
MR. ROCAP: The result was pretty remarkable. It was 2-1. I’ll read what the panel said. They
concluded after hearing all the evidence that there was insufficient evidence to bar
Mr. Geisen from practice, and they said that, “Staff failed to show by a
preponderance of evidence that Mr. Geisen engaged in the deliberate
misrepresentation with which he was charged.” Pretty striking after having a
conviction in front of a jury of laymen as opposed to the judges who were steeped
in the nuclear energy context. What was your assessment of the panel? It was a 2-
1 decision. How did you feel they approached this?
MR. HIBEY: With an open mind. Each member of the panel assigned a degree of probity to the
evidence that was adduced at trial. I had one judge who, as far as he was
concerned, found this to be an open-and-shut case for the Commission. I had
another judge who was openly skeptical of every aspect of the trial proof in
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support of guilt, and a third judge who was more technically aware, who never
could marry the evidence to his own understanding of the technical issues
underscoring the case. So we got a 2-1 decision.
MR. ROCAP: So based on that, there was no ban, and I believe the staff then appealed to the
Commission itself, and they upheld the 2-1 decision of the panel. Then you went
back to Judge Katz, who had imposed an enforcement ban as a condition of
probation. What happened there?
MR. HIBEY: I’m a little vague on this, but I know he set aside that restriction. He basically
said, I can easily rely on what the Commission affirmed in terms of the threejudge
panel’s findings, and I’m not going to get in the way of them. Therefore, it
justifies lifting the ban.
MR. ROCAP: In other words, let the technical experts as opposed to the laypeople decide
whether he can proceed. So then the ban was lifted, and at that point his ordeal
was over pretty successfully.
MR. HIBEY: It was.
MR. ROCAP: Alright. Well that’s the David Geisen matter. I wanted to talk a little bit about
Paul Manafort because at one point, you represented him, six or seven years ago.
You had known him before, and I think he was somehow involved in your ending
up representing President Marcos back in the mid-1980s. Could you talk a little
bit about when you met Paul Manafort?
MR. HIBEY: When we formed the law firm of Anderson, Hibey, Nauheim and Blair, my most
notable memory of meeting new people was of my partner Stan Anderson – a lifelong
Republican, very connected, worked in the White House for a period –
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introducing me to a number of his Republican friends, one of whom was Paul
Manafort. I later learned Stan Anderson, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Lee
Atwater were basically considered among the “young turks” of the Republican
party during the Reagan administration. I had no interest in Republican politics,
so I can remember only that kind of very peripheral contact with these guys, who
I later concluded were the new face of the Republican establishment. So it was in
that context that I think I met Paul. We never formed a relationship independently
of that kind of introductory contact.
Paul sent business to the law firm. It came to the law firm through Stan.
Over time, where some form of litigation might be involved, Paul would have me
in mind, I think probably because Stan and I were partners and had been for many
years dating back to my entry into private practice.
Over time, when the issue was definitely grounded in litigation or defense
issues, Paul felt free to contact me or whomever he could get ahold of amongst
the four partners. So it was always very promising in a business kind of way when
I was called either by Stan or directly by Paul about a case.
MR. ROCAP: There was another interesting case that Paul Manafort brought to you involving a
trial in Ukraine that apparently you were involved in. I did not know that you had
a Ukrainian law license [laughter]. Perhaps you can talk a little bit about that.
MR. HIBEY: Some years later, Paul called me and said, “Are you in a position to handle the
representation of a Ukrainian politician who is being charged with extortion and
another offense?” I asked why, and he said that basically his assessment was that
this guy needed an American-style defense, which he could not get in Ukraine,
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but which would be to his benefit if it could be effectively mounted. So I said,
“Yes, I can handle that.” And he arranged for me and one of my colleagues to fly
to Kiev and meet with the client’s representatives, because the client was in jail,
and to go from there.
I asked my partner Tony Trenga, now a highly-regarded federal judge in
the Eastern District of Virginia, who was a Russian major at Princeton. I had
studied the language, so I felt very empowered. That began a five-month
representation of our client Boris Kolesnikov. He later became a vice premier of
Ukraine.
MR. ROCAP: Were you in Ukraine and in the Ukrainian trial court?
MR. HIBEY: Yes. All of the above. I was told that I needed to bring with me a certified copy of
my law degree, of my membership in the bar, of my employment with Miller and
Chevalier, and my membership in the Supreme Court, certified, because they’ll
probably ask for that when I go over. So we dutifully got all of that together, as I
like to say, with all the ribbons and feathers. There came a time when I was asked
for my credentials when I met with the public prosecutor’s office. I handed them
all of it. This was my effort to establish my presence, and more importantly to get
permission to see my client who was at that time housed in what they called “the
Inoculator.” I have no idea what that means, but it is generally considered a
violation of one’s human rights to be housed in the Inoculator, far worse than
when you’re going to do regular jail time, I was told.
When I handed all of this to the prosecutor’s office, the representative of
the prosecutor said that he would have to study the documents. I said, “You can
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do that right here.” He said, “No, it will take me a while.” So I asked how long,
and he said four days. I used rather crass English at that point and said, “That’s
nonsense. I want to be with my client right away.” He said no.
Now some time before that encounter, at the beginning of our stay in
Kiev, we had a formal execution of our representation of the client. We signed a
document. They gave me a pen. They wanted to drink to the relationship. We got
through all that, and then they said, “When are you going to convene your first
press conference?” I said, “I don’t do that. I don’t talk to the press. In fact, I have
a reputation for not talking to the press, and I don’t see any need to do that here.”
They looked at me rather strangely. They were a little unsettled, yet they were
willing to indulge me at that moment. So we didn’t have a press conference.
When I went to see the prosecutor three days later, and he said it would
take him three more days to study, I said, “That’s b******t.” I turned to my
handlers, a translator, and I said, “I want a press conference.” My client owned
the soccer team of Donetsk, and it was considered one of the premier soccer
teams in Europe, so if they needed a press conference, they could have one in a
moment. And that’s what they did. After my meeting with the prosecutor’s office,
I went to a conference room in the hotel we were staying in. I walked in there, and
there was an enormous gaggle of journalists all holding a notepad. At the far end
of the room, there were all these TV cameras. So I conducted my first press
conference, in which I identified myself as a lawyer for Boris Kolesnikov, and
how we’re getting screwed by the authorities who won’t even let me see him. I
made all kinds of noise like that. I stopped and said I’d take questions. The first
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question was, “Who are you?” The second question was, “Are you CIA?) The
third question was, “Are you being paid?” And the fourth question was, “Who’s
paying you?” So I handled those questions, and that took care of my first
encounter of four with the press and television, which I understand was broadcast
not only across Ukraine but well into Russia. Every time we had one of these
press conferences, which usually came at the end of a particular visit by Tony and
me, we would sprint to the airport and jokingly say to each other, “We better get
out of here before they catch on.” Because I was just saying stuff that you could
say in the United States without batting an eye. To say it over there could get you
in trouble. We never got into trouble.
MR. ROCAP: Eventually was there a trial?
MR. HIBEY: Eventually. Well, I was introduced to a lawyer who had a reputation for
representing civil rights issues for clients.
MR. ROCAP: In Ukraine?
MR. HIBEY: In Ukraine. But I also was asked to fly to Donetsk to meet with a lawyer there
who would also participate in the criminal matter when it came before the court in
Kiev. So Tony and I flew to Donetsk and met with this very interesting, somewhat
taciturn lawyer who stared at me through the whole time that I was explaining to
him what I wanted to have happen in the courtroom the next day in Kiev, and that
it was my understanding that when he was asked to make the presentation, I
wanted to be sure about what he was going to say and how he was going to say it.
So we had a lengthy meeting in his conference room during which time people
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were going in and out of the conference room as if they were shoppers in a mall.
It was amazing that he could maintain his concentration.
So we spent a few hours there, and he stared at me the whole time,
listening very carefully, I think, to what I was saying. During that period, his cell
phone went off, and it rang, and it rang, and it rang, and he never made a move
toward it. I thought to myself, is this disrespectful that he doesn’t stop, say pardon
me, turn off the ringer or something. No. He just continued to stare. So we
somehow got through the meeting, jumped on a plane, and flew back.
The next day we’re in court. The courthouse was a toilet. It was dingy. It
didn’t appear to have any improvements done on it in years. We had a packed
courtroom, made more so by the fact that there were three security services
groups providing security in the courtroom, which was jammed with certain folks
who had an interest in the case, plus the ever-present television cameras because
they were broadcasting this thing. There was a cage in the courtroom, and there
was a mob outside protesting. I learned later that it was our interests doing the
protesting. What we heard was, with the windows open and no air conditioning in
this building, the crowd downstairs was shouting “Repress tcheske nyet –
Democrat tcheske dah.” Just as loud as could be. So the judge, a woman, comes
out. I’m seated in the front row. They bring out the client, and this is the first time
I’ve seen him because they never let me see him, and they put him in the cage and
they lock the cage with a Yale lock that I could have picked in a heartbeat, but
there you were.
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So the proceedings began, and the first thing that happened was they
disbarred the lawyer from Kiev that was supposed to be local counsel. That left
the argument to our hero from Donetsk, so he gets up and starts arguing. In the
middle of his argument, his phone goes off with that crazy ringtone that I’ll never
forget. The ringtone was the Mexican Hat Dance. There was a legislator from my
guy’s political party sitting next to me, and she leaned over and said to me,
“Remember this moment because it will never be replicated again.” I thought to
myself, I think she’s got a point there.
After the argument was made, the judge stepped away from the bench.
The legislator said to me, “She’s getting her orders right now.” A little while
later, she comes out and dismisses the entire case, at which point one of the
security services, the armed guards who were in the courtroom, one of them
walked over to the cage and unlocked the Yale lock, opened it up, and the client
steps out and is immediately hoisted on the shoulders of people there and taken
out in the street to, I guess, commune with the people who were yelling about
repression and democracy. And he was spirited off.
Now you’ll understand I have yet to meet the guy. Word came back to me
that he wanted to meet me and that we should meet at the Baltschug Kempinski
hotel off Red Square. So we dutifully flew to Moscow, and that’s the first and
only time I ever met the guy. His criminal case had been taken care of. There was
an article where we got all the credit for him being free.
MR. ROCAP: That’s a remarkable story.
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MR. HIBEY: Oh it is. Tony and I have laughed about it over the years. We did what we had to
do. It ended up that I had four press conferences.
MR. ROCAP: Were you arguing the merits during those press conferences?
MR. HIBEY: Yes. Not in exquisite detail about who did what and when, but generally making
broad statements of innocence and corruption in trying to frame him.
One other thing. When they brought him into the courtroom from this
terrible place I told you about, he was clean-shaven and wearing a Brioni suit. He
was very grateful.
MR. ROCAP: He ended up in a higher position in the Ukrainian government?
MR. HIBEY: He became a Vice Prime Minister. I’ve lost track. Paul was very happy with the
work. On a separate track, told me that the clients were very satisfied.
MR. ROCAP: As they should be. There are very few lawyers who can have cases against their
clients dismissed without ever meeting them.
MR. HIBEY: That’s true [laughter].
MR. ROCAP: We have a bit of a time limit today so we’re going to finish here. We’ll come back
and I think finish up next session with a little bit about your representation of Paul
Manafort and then going into your representation of the Palestine authority and
the Palestinian Liberation Organization and then a few things at the end.
Thank you very much. Fascinating stories this morning.
MR. HIBEY: Thank you.