Donald Trump Indicted in New York

[Solauren]

Question - If Trump doesn't show up for a court date because he's on the campaign trail, would a warrant be issued for his arrest?

Assuming so, and he was arrested and in prison at the time, would that effect his nomination for the Republican ballet? (i.e keep him off/get him removed)

[Rogue 9]

No, being in jail doesn't affect the ballot. Hell, being dead doesn't if it's close enough; the ballots are finalized well in advance.

[Ralin]

Though it does raise the question. If New York convicts and incarcerates Trump and he's then elected president, do they have to let him out?

[Gandalf]

I don't see why. State crimes are the state's business, weirdly.

[bilateralrope]

Question - If Trump doesn't show up for a court date because he's on the campaign trail, would a warrant be issued for his arrest?

Assuming so, and he was arrested and in prison at the time, would that effect his nomination for the Republican ballet? (i.e keep him off/get him removed)

Only that he won't be able to make any public appearances. Which seem like an important part of his campaign strategy.

[bilateralrope]

Trump’s legal team is an epic disaster

This kind of havoc does not bode well for Trump’s legal future.

May 29, 2023, 10:00 PM NZST
By Katie S. Phang, MSNBC Columnist

The attorney-client relationship is historically one of the most sacred, cloaked with the (usually) impenetrable privilege of complete confidentiality and one that is imbued with explicit and implicit trust. Clients look to their lawyers for guidance, a keen knowledge of the law, and the ability to provide favorable public-facing content for those moments and cases where the client cannot interface with the media and the public. There are professional standards and each state has rules of conduct.

But when it comes to the many cases of former President Donald Trump, those sacred bonds are sometimes bent to the point of breaking. Who’s to blame? Depends on who you ask, I suspect. But regardless of where the fault may lie, this kind of havoc does not bode well for Trump’s legal future. When faced with so many legal challenges, a surgically orchestrated strategy is necessary. Sometimes, even just the outward image of prepared and organized calm is the goal. But with Trump, you have the perfect storm of infighting lawyers jostling for pole position and a client who is prone to embracing the microphone and never meeting a camera he didn’t love. It’s a recipe for an attorney-client disaster.

Trump presently has several pending cases and investigations, both state and federal:

• He is being prosecuted by way of a 34-count felony indictment by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, led by Alvin Bragg, charging him with falsification of business records relating to payments made to Trump’s former “fixer” and personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to reimburse Cohen for a hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels. That case was just set for trial in March 2024.
• After being found civilly liable for $5 million in damages by a New York jury of his peers for the sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carroll, Trump is now facing the prospect of an amended complaint (to include statements made after the verdict in another case) for his earlier defamation of Carroll in June 2019, when he was president of the United States.
• New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a $250 million civil lawsuit against Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, accusing them of falsely inflating the value of assets in order to defraud insurers and lenders. Trump has been deposed twice now in that case; the first time he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 400 times.
• Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith presently has at least two investigations into the twice-impeached Trump: (1) allegations of improper and illegal retention of classified materials once his presidency was terminated and (2) allegations of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in various states, including Georgia.
• In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is pursuing an investigation into Trump’s alleged attempts to extort officials in the state into overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election and to install a fake slate of electors to vote for Trump over the lawfully elected Joe Biden.

And to be clear, these are the cases and investigations about which we are aware. There could be other investigations that are underway about which we have no knowledge at this stage. Considering all of the above, you would think a client facing that amount of legal peril would have a top-notch team of lawyers in place to defend him. But when you have a client like Trump, normal expectations don’t apply.

Just recently, attorney Tim Parlatore announced — very publicly, via voluntarily testifying for the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation — that he was resigning from the Trump legal team, allegedly because of his inability to provide the right kind of counsel to Trump due to obstacles created by fellow Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn. Parlatore claims that Epshteyn was keeping him and other lawyers from being able to speak to Trump and that Epshteyn was not being honest with their client.

Interestingly, it was just a few months ago that Parlatore was singing Epshteyn’s praises, according to The New York Times, whom he told, “It’s good to have someone who’s a lawyer who is also inside the palace gates.” It doesn’t bode well that only a few months after that, Parlatore publicly derided Epshteyn and said Epshteyn was gatekeeping the rest of the legal team from accessing their one client (Trump).

Parlatore also went after fellow Trump attorney Joe Tacopina for what Parlatore said was a “potential conflict of interest” in Tacopina representing Trump in the Manhattan district attorney's office Stormy Daniels hush money criminal case. At one time, Daniels had contacted Tacopina about possibly representing her and Parlatore questioned openly on cable news whether Tacopina was the “right” attorney to represent Trump at trial.

Although Epshteyn has been referred to as Trump’s in-house counsel, Parlatore told The New York Times he has reportedly little documented legal experience, including none in the criminal defense arena. Epshteyn has created a name for himself in MAGA circles for being a political strategist, for his combative style and for his access to Trump. Trump also has apparently given Epshteyn the ability to hire and fire attorneys.

Parlatore isn’t the only attorney on Trump’s Keystone Cops legal team to throw up the white flag. Evan Corcoran, who was Trump’s lead attorney regarding the Mar-a-Lago classified documents investigation, resigned from that role after being subpoenaed by the Justice Department to testify before a federal grand jury. Granted, Corcoran remains on the global legal team as counsel for Trump, but it isn’t a commonplace occurrence for an attorney to end up being compelled by way of court order to testify before a grand jury regarding conduct committed by a client. Lest Corcoran feel lonely, though, Parlatore has also provided testimony before Jack Smith’s federal grand jury for his role in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. However, Parlatore chose to appear voluntarily before the grand jury without the need for a subpoena to give testimony about how additional document searches were conducted at other Trump properties.

Pat A. Cipollone, former Trump White House counsel, and Patrick Philbin, former deputy White House counsel, have also testified before a federal grand jury about Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Oh, and Epshteyn? He has testified before Fani Willis’ Fulton County special grand jury regarding Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Corcoran also has the dubious honor of being the subject of piercing attorney-client privilege because of the crime-fraud exception for his communications — both written and verbal — with Trump. The successful application of the crime-fraud exception is rare. A few federal judges, as well as some appellate court judges, have found that there was sufficient evidence of criminal activity afoot. If I were Corcoran, I would vacate the premises of Trump world in its entirety. I am of course not counsel to Corcoran, although to be clear, several Trump lawyers have had to retain their own lawyers due to their representation of Trump. The newest iteration of “MAGA” might as well now stand for “Making Attorneys Get Attorneys.”

Notable examples include Christina Bobb, who was interviewed by the FBI for her role in signing off on the certification representing that there were no more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, despite further evidence proving that certification was not true. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal counsel, has had to retain several lawyers because of his own exposure, both criminal and civil, after representing Trump over the years.

Let’s also not forget other former Trump lawyers like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, all of whom are facing ethics complaints affecting their ability to practice law in various jurisdictions, as well as several investigations for their roles as Trump’s counsel. In some instances and depending upon the findings by various referees and judges in these different jurisdictions that are investigating former Trump lawyers, these attorneys could lose their licenses to practice law.

Trump runs his mouth unfettered and unedited and uncontrolled. He spent considerable time during a recent town hall on CNN stating for all to hear, including prosecutors far and wide, that he took classified documents from the White House, and he took the opportunity to potentially defame Carroll further.

If he’s being given legal advice not to talk, he is clearly not listening or he doesn’t respect the counsel being dispensed. Historically, Trump has done and said whatever he wants, presumably regardless of the legal advice being provided by his dozens of attorneys. And oftentimes that has occurred to his legal peril. When facing multiple cases and multiple investigations, some of which could result in years of incarceration in prison, a client like Trump should not be speaking publicly about the facts of a case or the circumstances underlying the basis of an investigation. But Trump? He’ll go on national TV and do it anyway.

It's interesting that throughout all of the dirty laundry airing of the inner turmoil regarding his legal team, Trump has remained unusually quiet. Trump himself has not come forward to voice his support for any one attorney. So the public continues, with a combination of fascination and disgust, to watch the train wreck that is Trump Legal World unfold like a political iteration of The Hunger Games. Which attorney will be left standing at the end?

This should be good news to anyone worried about how Trump's various legal cases will go. No matter how much money he fundraises for his legal team, he seems unwilling to hire competent lawyers.

The only Trump lawyer I know of who wasn't mentioned here is Chris Kise, the one who got paid $3 million in advance. Probably the only competent lawyer Trump has. But that advance only pays for so much legal work, especially if Trump prefers to listen to the lawyers telling him what he wants to hear. Even when that gets those lawyers into legal trouble of their own.

[bilateralrope]

Trump’s Lawyers Start to Wonder if One Could Be a Snitch

There’s plenty of bad blood among Trump’s team of lawyers. But there’s also a new concern that someone could turn on the rest of the team.

Jose Pagliery
Political Investigations Reporter
Updated May. 30, 2023 12:45PM ET / Published May. 30, 2023 3:58AM ET

With three anticipated indictments, two ongoing court cases, and an ever-expanding cadre of lawyers, former President Donald Trump is at a critical juncture—and yet his legal advisers are starting to turn on each other.

According to five sources with direct knowledge of the situation, clashing personalities and the increasing outside threat of law enforcement has sown deep divisions that have only worsened in recent months. The internal bickering has already sparked one departure in recent weeks—and that could be just the beginning.

As Trump’s legal troubles keep growing—with criminal and civil investigations in New York City, Washington, and Atlanta—so too does the unwieldy band of attorneys who simply can’t get along.

The cast of characters includes an accused meddler who has Trump’s ear, a young attorney who lawyers on the team suggested is only there because the former president likes the way she looks, and a celebrity lawyer who’s increasingly viewed with disdain. Worst of all, now that federal investigators have turned the interrogation spotlight on some of Trump’s lawyers themselves, defense attorneys on the team seem to be questioning whether their colleagues may actually turn into snitches.

“There’s a lot of lawyers and a lot of jealousy,” said one person on Trump’s legal team, explaining that the sheer number of lawyers protecting a single man accused of so many crimes is without parallel.

Part of the concern over lawyers turning on each other is due to the fact that the Department of Justice already has one Trump attorney’s professional notes, which could position him as a future witness against his own client, and the DOJ has another lawyer who said too much in an unrelated case and has positioned herself as yet another potential witness against her client.

But much of the anger from Trump’s lawyers is directed at the former president’s right-hand man, Boris Epshteyn, who’s accused of running interference on certain legal advice from more experienced courtroom gladiators.

Epshteyn, who’s a lawyer himself, has risen through the ranks in Trumpworld over the years, first as an adviser for Trump’s 2016 campaign, then as a more senior adviser for 2020, and now part of Trump’s innermost circle for 2024.

Epshteyn seems to have the former president’s supreme confidence, with what’s described as a final say on all matters related to public relations and legal issues. But there’s snickering in the shadows. Several sources ridiculed the way Epshteyn refers to himself as “in-house counsel”—normally a term for a company’s corporate attorney—noting how it echoes the way John Gotti’s mafia lawyer used to describe his services for the infamous Gambino crime family.

Epshteyn’s meddling has particularly affected the lawyers working to defend Trump from Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith and his investigation into whether the former president broke the law when he took top secret documents on his way out of the White House in January 2021 and hoarded them at Mar-a-Lago.

“Boris pissed off all the Florida lawyers. People are dropping like flies. Everybody hates him. He’s a toxic loser. He’s a complete psycho,” said a second person, who could barely contain their anger while discussing the matter. “He’s got daddy issues, and Trump is his daddy.”

A source close to the campaign gave a much kinder assessment of Epshteyn: "He is absolutely focused on protecting President Trump from every angle—legal, political, and media."

Regardless, the infighting came to a head recently, sparking the departure earlier this month of Tim Parlatore, one of the lawyers in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

Parlatore’s sudden departure from Trump’s legal team came after a never-reported meeting last month at Mar-a-Lago, where several lawyers threatened to leave. According to two sources who described it as “an intervention,” the lawyers handling the case put forward an ultimatum: either Epshteyn goes or they do.

Four sources described how Epshteyn would at times stand guard between Trump and his own defense lawyers, demanding that all communication flow through him. One of these sources noted that Parlatore’s first ever one-on-one meeting with his own client was when the defense lawyer recently submitted his resignation.

A fifth person who regularly works on legal matters countered the description of Epshteyn as an obstructionist, noting that Trump’s lawyers still have a direct channel to the former president when necessary. But this person acknowledged that Epshteyn plays a pivotal role in screening major issues that fly Trump’s way, much like a public official’s highly defensive chief of staff.

“He does help arrange things. He tries to coordinate. But everybody has Trump’s phone number, and he picks up the phone. And he calls you directly when he feels like it,” this person said.

“Some people don’t like Boris, but most of us are used to having a client to ourselves,” this person continued. “We don’t have other people involved. When there’s all these lawyers, there’s going to be conflict. Different people, different ideas. People feel like Boris is the one who’s deciding things, but it’s not Boris making decisions. I guarantee you that’s Trump not wanting something.”

This source suggested that, at this stage—with three different criminal investigations closing in and multiple trials scheduled to interrupt the election season—it’s inevitable that high-powered lawyers fully capable of representing someone like a former American president would chide at being questioned by someone like Epshteyn. Another person described him as “a really super-smart guy” who still manages to be “obnoxious, vociferous, and bombastic” because “he has a law license.”

“It doesn’t mean he’s really a lawyer,” this person said.

The closest anyone on the team has come to publicly hinting at in-fighting was Parlatore in a CNN appearance last week, in which he blamed Epshteyn for doing “everything he could to try to block us, to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the president.”

But as another Trump lawyer, Alina Habba, said days later on that same TV news network: “You have type A personalities. We’re all lawyers, and not everybody’s always going to get along.”

Epshteyn declined to comment on the record, but a Trump 2024 campaign spokesman moved to create distance between the remaining lawyers and the departing counsel.

“Mr. Parlatore is no longer a member of the legal team. His statements regarding current members of the legal team are unfounded and categorically false,” Steven Cheung told The Daily Beast.

Then there’s the 33-year-old Lindsey Halligan, a relatively inexperienced lawyer who suddenly appeared in Trump’s orbit sometime last summer as a vocal advocate on the right-wing Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. She was at Mar-a-Lago during the FBI’s search there in August, quickly became involved in Trump’s bumbling lawsuit in October against CNN for comparing Trump to Hitler, and has since been generally involved in his defense against the feds.

Fellow attorneys advising Trump have seriously questioned why she’s on the team, given that the most notable case she worked on since graduating from law school in 2013 appears to have been second-chair to a more senior lawyer defending an insurance company at a two-day trial against three Miami homeowners with damaged roofs. Even in that case, a judge wouldn’t award her attorney’s fees because he ruled that her team screwed up and didn’t act “in good faith.”

“It waters down the honor to represent a president. It really does, when you think about it,” one of her colleagues told The Daily Beast.

Two current members of Trump’s defense speculated that Trump only keeps Halligan around because he likes to be surrounded by attractive people.

Halligan did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But another colleague came to her defense.

“With a new person coming in, people are looking to undercut her. She's a young, attractive woman, and people can be pretty sexist,” this person said, noting that such speculation about her hiring was “an easy way to undercut a woman attorney.”

Another Trump source also disputed the characterization, saying Halligan is "a highly experience litigation attorney and served as a partner at one of the largest law firms in Florida."

Trump’s mounting legal problems have only added to the general anxiety afflicting his attorneys.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which indicted Trump in March for faking business records, is about to dump thousands of documents of evidence on defense lawyers Todd Blanche, Susan Necheles, and Joe Tacopina—who aren’t allowed to freely share those documents with the former president. They may even have to fight Trump to prevent him from stupidly posting sensitive details on social media.

The DA’s prosecutors are already trying to fracture Trump’s legal team by attempting to disqualify Tacopina and make him seem like a weak link, because he has a tenuous connection to a key witness in the case, the porn star Stormy Daniels whose hush money payment Trump tried to hide while running for president back in 2016.

Meanwhile, defense attorneys Alina Habba and Christopher Kise are gearing up for a civil trial in October against the New York Attorney General, who seeks to bleed the Trump Organization dry and destroy Trump’s ability to do conduct business in the financial capital of the world by holding him personally liable for bank and insurance fraud.

In Georgia, the defense lawyers Drew Findling, Melissa Goldberg, and Jennifer L. Little are preparing for the Fulton County District Attorney to indict Trump in July or August over the way he intimidated the state’s top elections official in 2021 while trying to overturn his loss there—a recorded phone call where he was advised by yet other lawyers he trusted.

And an entirely different team of lawyers split up between the nation’s capital and his oceanside Florida estate—former federal prosecutors M. Evan Corcoran, John P. Rowley, and Jim Trusty up north and Halligan down south—are gearing up for two different fights with the Department of Justice.

Meanwhile, there’s growing resentment against Habba and Tacopina among the some lawyers over the way they handled Trump’s recent rape trial against the journalist E. Jean Carroll. The former president didn’t bother showing up to testify, his attorneys presented no case, and the jury swiftly concluded he committed sexual abuse. One source commended the duo for putting up a fight while dealing with a no-bullshit federal judge and a client who wouldn’t stop digging himself into a hole. But others ripped Habba for failing to get better rulings from the federal judge before the trial and tore into Tacopina over his brutish performance in court.

“She quickly demonstrated herself to have a total lack of understanding, and he totally screwed that case up. That was a winnable case if he presented a defense,” one source said.

While Trump’s sprawling legal battalion occasionally comes together for massive meetings about the overall pitiful state of affairs, each case team operates in its own lane—raising suspicions that some teams are completely under-equipped and could cause others to trip up. Trump has so many simultaneous criminal investigations that they have to coordinate to not double book potential appearances in court—or trials. And they all have to bear in mind that he’s actively campaigning for president of the United States.

But what’s really driving the deepest distrust is the way Smith’s investigators have started turning up the heat on Trump’s own lawyers, driving wedges between the counselors and their client.

It happened when a federal judge, citing the existence of a possible crime, unilaterally and speedily handed prosecutors Corcoran’s professional notes—an odd and highly questionable move involving what are normally highly guarded secrets.

And it happened when those prosecutors questioned Habba, who put herself in an impossible situation when she declared in the New York AG’s case that she thoroughly searched every nook and cranny at Mar-a-Lago for documents relevant in that business fraud case—only to have the FBI later find classified documents in those desk drawers and cabinets months later.

“It's either perjury or incompetence,” said one insider.

Several attorneys on Trump’s team consider these two events as potential liabilities, given that the feds could pressure them to become witnesses against their client.

The DOJ case is getting so hot, some lawyers have begun to see it as radioactive to their careers. One lawyer on Trump’s team emphatically told The Daily Beast, “I have nothing to do with that. I have a law license to protect.” Another stressed they might slam the eject button before it gets much worse.

“It’s crazy in there. It really is. I’ve heard there’s a mess coming,” this person said.

I wonder how bad, and entertaining, the infighting among Trump's lawyers will get as the various prosecutors turn up the heat.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Trump’s Lawyers Start to Wonder if One Could Be a Snitch

There’s plenty of bad blood among Trump’s team of lawyers. But there’s also a new concern that someone could turn on the rest of the team.

Jose Pagliery
Political Investigations Reporter
Updated May. 30, 2023 12:45PM ET / Published May. 30, 2023 3:58AM ET

With three anticipated indictments, two ongoing court cases, and an ever-expanding cadre of lawyers, former President Donald Trump is at a critical juncture—and yet his legal advisers are starting to turn on each other.

According to five sources with direct knowledge of the situation, clashing personalities and the increasing outside threat of law enforcement has sown deep divisions that have only worsened in recent months. The internal bickering has already sparked one departure in recent weeks—and that could be just the beginning.

As Trump’s legal troubles keep growing—with criminal and civil investigations in New York City, Washington, and Atlanta—so too does the unwieldy band of attorneys who simply can’t get along.

The cast of characters includes an accused meddler who has Trump’s ear, a young attorney who lawyers on the team suggested is only there because the former president likes the way she looks, and a celebrity lawyer who’s increasingly viewed with disdain. Worst of all, now that federal investigators have turned the interrogation spotlight on some of Trump’s lawyers themselves, defense attorneys on the team seem to be questioning whether their colleagues may actually turn into snitches.

“There’s a lot of lawyers and a lot of jealousy,” said one person on Trump’s legal team, explaining that the sheer number of lawyers protecting a single man accused of so many crimes is without parallel.

Part of the concern over lawyers turning on each other is due to the fact that the Department of Justice already has one Trump attorney’s professional notes, which could position him as a future witness against his own client, and the DOJ has another lawyer who said too much in an unrelated case and has positioned herself as yet another potential witness against her client.

But much of the anger from Trump’s lawyers is directed at the former president’s right-hand man, Boris Epshteyn, who’s accused of running interference on certain legal advice from more experienced courtroom gladiators.

Epshteyn, who’s a lawyer himself, has risen through the ranks in Trumpworld over the years, first as an adviser for Trump’s 2016 campaign, then as a more senior adviser for 2020, and now part of Trump’s innermost circle for 2024.

Epshteyn seems to have the former president’s supreme confidence, with what’s described as a final say on all matters related to public relations and legal issues. But there’s snickering in the shadows. Several sources ridiculed the way Epshteyn refers to himself as “in-house counsel”—normally a term for a company’s corporate attorney—noting how it echoes the way John Gotti’s mafia lawyer used to describe his services for the infamous Gambino crime family.

Epshteyn’s meddling has particularly affected the lawyers working to defend Trump from Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith and his investigation into whether the former president broke the law when he took top secret documents on his way out of the White House in January 2021 and hoarded them at Mar-a-Lago.

“Boris pissed off all the Florida lawyers. People are dropping like flies. Everybody hates him. He’s a toxic loser. He’s a complete psycho,” said a second person, who could barely contain their anger while discussing the matter. “He’s got daddy issues, and Trump is his daddy.”

A source close to the campaign gave a much kinder assessment of Epshteyn: "He is absolutely focused on protecting President Trump from every angle—legal, political, and media."

Regardless, the infighting came to a head recently, sparking the departure earlier this month of Tim Parlatore, one of the lawyers in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

Parlatore’s sudden departure from Trump’s legal team came after a never-reported meeting last month at Mar-a-Lago, where several lawyers threatened to leave. According to two sources who described it as “an intervention,” the lawyers handling the case put forward an ultimatum: either Epshteyn goes or they do.

Four sources described how Epshteyn would at times stand guard between Trump and his own defense lawyers, demanding that all communication flow through him. One of these sources noted that Parlatore’s first ever one-on-one meeting with his own client was when the defense lawyer recently submitted his resignation.

A fifth person who regularly works on legal matters countered the description of Epshteyn as an obstructionist, noting that Trump’s lawyers still have a direct channel to the former president when necessary. But this person acknowledged that Epshteyn plays a pivotal role in screening major issues that fly Trump’s way, much like a public official’s highly defensive chief of staff.

“He does help arrange things. He tries to coordinate. But everybody has Trump’s phone number, and he picks up the phone. And he calls you directly when he feels like it,” this person said.

“Some people don’t like Boris, but most of us are used to having a client to ourselves,” this person continued. “We don’t have other people involved. When there’s all these lawyers, there’s going to be conflict. Different people, different ideas. People feel like Boris is the one who’s deciding things, but it’s not Boris making decisions. I guarantee you that’s Trump not wanting something.”

This source suggested that, at this stage—with three different criminal investigations closing in and multiple trials scheduled to interrupt the election season—it’s inevitable that high-powered lawyers fully capable of representing someone like a former American president would chide at being questioned by someone like Epshteyn. Another person described him as “a really super-smart guy” who still manages to be “obnoxious, vociferous, and bombastic” because “he has a law license.”

“It doesn’t mean he’s really a lawyer,” this person said.

The closest anyone on the team has come to publicly hinting at in-fighting was Parlatore in a CNN appearance last week, in which he blamed Epshteyn for doing “everything he could to try to block us, to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the president.”

But as another Trump lawyer, Alina Habba, said days later on that same TV news network: “You have type A personalities. We’re all lawyers, and not everybody’s always going to get along.”

Epshteyn declined to comment on the record, but a Trump 2024 campaign spokesman moved to create distance between the remaining lawyers and the departing counsel.

“Mr. Parlatore is no longer a member of the legal team. His statements regarding current members of the legal team are unfounded and categorically false,” Steven Cheung told The Daily Beast.

Then there’s the 33-year-old Lindsey Halligan, a relatively inexperienced lawyer who suddenly appeared in Trump’s orbit sometime last summer as a vocal advocate on the right-wing Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. She was at Mar-a-Lago during the FBI’s search there in August, quickly became involved in Trump’s bumbling lawsuit in October against CNN for comparing Trump to Hitler, and has since been generally involved in his defense against the feds.

Fellow attorneys advising Trump have seriously questioned why she’s on the team, given that the most notable case she worked on since graduating from law school in 2013 appears to have been second-chair to a more senior lawyer defending an insurance company at a two-day trial against three Miami homeowners with damaged roofs. Even in that case, a judge wouldn’t award her attorney’s fees because he ruled that her team screwed up and didn’t act “in good faith.”

“It waters down the honor to represent a president. It really does, when you think about it,” one of her colleagues told The Daily Beast.

Two current members of Trump’s defense speculated that Trump only keeps Halligan around because he likes to be surrounded by attractive people.

Halligan did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But another colleague came to her defense.

“With a new person coming in, people are looking to undercut her. She's a young, attractive woman, and people can be pretty sexist,” this person said, noting that such speculation about her hiring was “an easy way to undercut a woman attorney.”

Another Trump source also disputed the characterization, saying Halligan is "a highly experience litigation attorney and served as a partner at one of the largest law firms in Florida."

Trump’s mounting legal problems have only added to the general anxiety afflicting his attorneys.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which indicted Trump in March for faking business records, is about to dump thousands of documents of evidence on defense lawyers Todd Blanche, Susan Necheles, and Joe Tacopina—who aren’t allowed to freely share those documents with the former president. They may even have to fight Trump to prevent him from stupidly posting sensitive details on social media.

The DA’s prosecutors are already trying to fracture Trump’s legal team by attempting to disqualify Tacopina and make him seem like a weak link, because he has a tenuous connection to a key witness in the case, the porn star Stormy Daniels whose hush money payment Trump tried to hide while running for president back in 2016.

Meanwhile, defense attorneys Alina Habba and Christopher Kise are gearing up for a civil trial in October against the New York Attorney General, who seeks to bleed the Trump Organization dry and destroy Trump’s ability to do conduct business in the financial capital of the world by holding him personally liable for bank and insurance fraud.

In Georgia, the defense lawyers Drew Findling, Melissa Goldberg, and Jennifer L. Little are preparing for the Fulton County District Attorney to indict Trump in July or August over the way he intimidated the state’s top elections official in 2021 while trying to overturn his loss there—a recorded phone call where he was advised by yet other lawyers he trusted.

And an entirely different team of lawyers split up between the nation’s capital and his oceanside Florida estate—former federal prosecutors M. Evan Corcoran, John P. Rowley, and Jim Trusty up north and Halligan down south—are gearing up for two different fights with the Department of Justice.

Meanwhile, there’s growing resentment against Habba and Tacopina among the some lawyers over the way they handled Trump’s recent rape trial against the journalist E. Jean Carroll. The former president didn’t bother showing up to testify, his attorneys presented no case, and the jury swiftly concluded he committed sexual abuse. One source commended the duo for putting up a fight while dealing with a no-bullshit federal judge and a client who wouldn’t stop digging himself into a hole. But others ripped Habba for failing to get better rulings from the federal judge before the trial and tore into Tacopina over his brutish performance in court.

“She quickly demonstrated herself to have a total lack of understanding, and he totally screwed that case up. That was a winnable case if he presented a defense,” one source said.

While Trump’s sprawling legal battalion occasionally comes together for massive meetings about the overall pitiful state of affairs, each case team operates in its own lane—raising suspicions that some teams are completely under-equipped and could cause others to trip up. Trump has so many simultaneous criminal investigations that they have to coordinate to not double book potential appearances in court—or trials. And they all have to bear in mind that he’s actively campaigning for president of the United States.

But what’s really driving the deepest distrust is the way Smith’s investigators have started turning up the heat on Trump’s own lawyers, driving wedges between the counselors and their client.

It happened when a federal judge, citing the existence of a possible crime, unilaterally and speedily handed prosecutors Corcoran’s professional notes—an odd and highly questionable move involving what are normally highly guarded secrets.

And it happened when those prosecutors questioned Habba, who put herself in an impossible situation when she declared in the New York AG’s case that she thoroughly searched every nook and cranny at Mar-a-Lago for documents relevant in that business fraud case—only to have the FBI later find classified documents in those desk drawers and cabinets months later.

“It's either perjury or incompetence,” said one insider.

Several attorneys on Trump’s team consider these two events as potential liabilities, given that the feds could pressure them to become witnesses against their client.

The DOJ case is getting so hot, some lawyers have begun to see it as radioactive to their careers. One lawyer on Trump’s team emphatically told The Daily Beast, “I have nothing to do with that. I have a law license to protect.” Another stressed they might slam the eject button before it gets much worse.

“It’s crazy in there. It really is. I’ve heard there’s a mess coming,” this person said.

I wonder how bad, and entertaining, the infighting among Trump's lawyers will get as the various prosecutors turn up the heat.

Like rats on a sinking ship?

[Zaune]

That dingbat who filed a case that was entirely written by ChatGPT and didn't fact-check or even proofread it tanked his career less ignominiously than some of these guys are about to.

[bilateralrope]

That dingbat who filed a case that was entirely written by ChatGPT and didn't fact-check or even proofread it tanked his career less ignominiously than some of these guys are about to.

Correction. It was two dingbats. Two layers who blew up their own careers.

[bilateralrope]

Trump regretted not declassifying retained military document in recording

Federal prosecutors have obtained audio in which the former president acknowledged he retained a classified paper on Iran

Hugo Lowell in Washington
@hugolowell
Thu 1 Jun 2023 02.18 BST

Federal prosecutors obtained audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting where Donald Trump suggested he should have declassified a military document about Iran he admitted retaining, according to people familiar with the criminal investigation into his retention of national security papers.

The document at issue is understood to be classified as “secret” – significant as the justice department typically prefers to charge espionage cases involving retention of materials at that level, rather than “top secret” papers that might be too sensitive or “confidential” papers that are too low.

The recording was made at Trump’s Bedminster golf club in July 2021, when the former president met with people helping his former chief of staff Mark Meadows write a book, by his aide Margo Martin who regularly taped conversations with authors to ensure they accurately recounted his remarks.

For several minutes of the audio recording, the sources said, Trump talks about how he cannot discuss the document because he no longer possesses the sweeping presidential power to declassify now out of office, but suggests that he should have done so when he was still in the White House.

But the previously unreported suggestion that he should have declassified the document presents a potentially perilous moment, as it indicates Trump knew that he had retained material which remained sensitive to national security – as well as the limitations on discussing it with unauthorized people. CNN earlier reported that prosecutors had the recording.

Prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith appear to have obtained the recording around March, as the criminal investigation targeting Trump intensified and numerous Trump aides were subpoenaed to testify before the federal grand jury hearing evidence in the case in Washington.

The tape was played to multiple witnesses, including Martin, when she testified in mid-March after having her laptop and phones imaged by prosecutors, the sources said. The first time the Trump lawyers learned about the tape was after Martin testified, one of the sources said.

In his book titled A Chief’s Chief, Meadows recounts how Trump once recalled a four-page report produced by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley that contained his plan to attack Iran, though it is unclear if that was the same meeting attended by his writers.

But the July 2021 meeting that was recorded came shortly after Trump was incensed about news reports that Milley had urged him not to attack Iran in the final weeks of his presidency.

Trump believed that the document outlining the report to attack Iran would undercut Milley’s reported assertions, though the report was actually written earlier in the Trump administration when Joseph Dunford was chairman of the joint chiefs, a person familiar with the document said.

A Trump spokesperson said in a statement: “Leaks from radical partisans behind this political persecution are designed to inflame tensions and continue the media’s harassment of President Trump and his supporters. It’s just more proof that when it comes to President Trump, there are absolutely no depths to which they will not sink as they pursue their witch hunts.”

That sounds like the kind of evidence that should make a smart suspect start negotiating for a plea deal. So it's going to be fun seeing what defense Trump tries to use now that "I declassified it with my mind" is completely off the table.

I suspect that the main reason why we haven't seen an indictment over the classified documents is because Jack Smith is investigating other Trump crimes with a plan to indict them all at once.

[Jub]

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-ho ... -rcna87681

Donald Trump has been indicted in the classified documents probe, and he says he has been summoned to appear in Miami federal court Tuesday.

NBC News has confirmed the indictment, first reported by Trump himself on his social media (Trump added the Miami summons detail). This is now the former president's second pending indictment but possibly not his last, as special counsel Jack Smith is also investigating Jan. 6 in addition to the classified documents, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating election interference in Georgia as well. Trump was already indicted in New York state court in the hush money case.

News of Trump's indictment in the documents probe has been expected, given a flurry of activity in a Florida grand jury this week, and he was recently informed that he was a target of the investigation and his attorneys met with prosecutors in an apparent attempt to stave off indictment.

[Ralin]

I read somewhere that Trump is supposedly especially pissed and likely scared because his people told him he wouldn't be indicted and if he was they could tie it up with jurisdictional BS for ages. Didn't see a source for that though.

So uh, obviously Trump is above the law in many ways and he does have political super powers that let him shrug off shit that would destroy anyone else's life and career, but these are not minor crimes. And not the sort of thing you'd stick your head out to prosecute Donald Trump for unless you thought you could win.

[Elfdart]

I should have built a boat like Noah with all the MAGA tears being shed right now.

In the words of Sammy Davis Jr:

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time!