Reed Smith partner Eric Dubelier. Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/ National Law Journal

Tensions escalated Wednesday between the special counsel's office and the defense lawyers representing a Russian business charged with interfering in the 2016 presidential election, as the two sides disputed whether a recent phone conversation ended with an abrupt hang-up.

During a hearing before U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich of the District of Columbia, special counsel prosecutor Jeannie Rhee said Reed Smith partner Eric Dubelier, a defense lawyer for Concord Management and Consulting LLC, hung up nine minutes into a “meet and confer” call that was scheduled to last an hour May 11.

Dubelier responded that Rhee's account was “absolutely false,” saying that the phone call ended after both sides said they had nothing more to discuss.

“It is demonstrably false,” Dubelier said in court.

“It didn't happen,” he added. “She knows it.”

Immediately after the hearing, Dubelier walked across the courtroom, pointed a finger at Rhee and continued to dispute her version of events. Standing across a desk from Rhee, a visibly upset Dubelier described her account of the events as “bullshit.”

Rhee is among the former Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr lawyers who joined Robert Mueller's prosecution team after his appointment last year.

Dubelier declined to comment after the hearing. A spokesman for Mueller's office also declined to comment.

The episode underscored the heated nature of the special counsel's case against Concord Management and Consulting, which charged 13 Russian individuals and two separate entities with subverting the 2016 election. Prosecutors allege Concord Management helped fund a conspiracy to sow discord into the election.

A week earlier, during an arraignment before U.S. Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey, Dubelier appeared to take issue with Rhee revealing that Reed Smith had filed papers with the Treasury Department suggesting that it was representing not only Concord Management but one of the other Russian entities: Concord Catering.

Dubelier said it was “in and of itself a disturbing fact” that the special counsel had access to the submissions, which he described as “confidential.” He clarified that he was appearing only for Concord Management and entered a not guilty plea on the Russian firm's behalf.

Wednesday's status hearing came two days after Dubelier and his co-counsel, Reed Smith partner Katherine Seikaly, filed a brief asking to review the legal instructions Mueller's team gave to the grand jury that indicted Concord Management and Consulting.

But the request went further than that. The Reed Smith lawyers ridiculed the alleged crime as “make-believe” and derided the prosecution as having “absolutely nothing to do” with the special counsel's core mandate of investigating coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

In the court filing, the Reed Smith lawyers said the prosecutors' reason for bringing the case “is obvious, and is political: to justify his own existence the special counsel has to indict a Russian—any Russian.”

Dubelier and Seikaly are so far the only defense lawyers who have made appearances in the special counsel's case against the 16 Russian defendants. The attorneys and the firm have not spoken publicly about the legal services they are providing to Concord Management.

On Wednesday, Dubelier said he was agitated by language that grouped Concord Management and Consulting in with the other defendants in the case. He said the 13 Russian individuals were affiliated with another entity, the Internet Research Agency, and noted that Concord Management and Consulting is accused of funding the alleged conspiracy.

“It appears that we're the only ones that are going to show up,” he said.

Friedrich urged the two sides to meet in person and scheduled a hearing for June 15.

 

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