(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Another day, another story (or ten) about TRUMP LAWYERS GONE WILD. This time the indiscretion was documented by The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, who was apparently at the next table last fall as attorneys Jim Trusty, Evan Corcoran, and Lindsey Halligan discussed the pending documents case against the former president. In a weird echo of Trump’s lawyers John Dowd and Ty Cobb snarking about White House Counsel Don McGahn in 2017, oblivious of New York Times reporter Ken Vogel at the next table, Trump’s crew dished about colleagues Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s preferred fixer, and Chris Kise, the former Florida solicitor general.
Trusty’s main irritation with Epshteyn, as he recounted, was having to run his legal decisions by him even though he did not consider him a trial lawyer and objected to how, in his eyes, he gave more priority to Trump’s perceived PR problems than to genuine legal problems.
He criticised Epshteyn for trying to “troubleshoot” those problems before they could reach Trump, instead of allowing him to straightforwardly brief the former president himself. The entire situation meant the lawyers were having to play “a game of thrones nonsense” that he found distracting.
Trusty then discussed legal strategy, suggesting Kise was “too apologetic” in opening remarks to the judge and questioned the validity of the FBI warrant for Mar-a-Lago.
Since that time, Kise got booted from the documents case and shunted to New York to play second fiddle to Alina Habba in the New York Attorney General’s civil prosecution; Epshteyn had his phone seized by the FBI and sat down for a chat with prosecutors; the Eleventh Circuit unceremoniously tossed Trusty and Corcoran’s challenge to the FBI warrant; Corcoran withdrew from the case after Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the crime-fraud exception to privilege applied to the case, forcing him to testify and hand over his case notes to the grand jury; and another attorney, Timothy Parlatore, withdrew from the case, loudly telling CNN’s Paula Reid that Epshteyn made it impossible for him to do his job.
This sentiment is apparently roundly shared among Trump’s lawyers, who love to shittalk Boris on background. The Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery, who had back to back stories on the infighting among Trump’s lawyers.
Tuesday’s story featured one source telling the reporter,“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 … He’s got daddy issues, and Trump is his daddy.”
Another complained that the presence of Lindsey Halligan, a telegenic young lawyer with scant litigation experience, “waters down the honor to represent a president.”
Of course, nothing “waters down the honor” like losing your license to practice law and getting stiffed on the bill, to boot — just ask Rudy Giuliani.
Pagliery reports that Trumpland lawyers are getting increasingly skittish and stabby now that an indictment in the documents case seems imminent, even worrying that one among their number will flip and become a witness for the feds.
And in a follow up piece, the journalist wrote about the rage engendered by Parlatore’s comments among the remaining lawyers, who feel that his comments undercut Trump’s defense and implied that his current counsel is complicit in obstruction.
“He puts himself out there, goes on TV and motherfucks people,” a source told Pagliery. “To say Boris is obstructing—who gets hurt there? Trump gets hurt there. That’s a serious, serious, true ethical violation. It’s a fucked-up thing to do.”
Meanwhile, Parlatore seems more concerned that Trumpland should know he has not and will not turn snitch.
And into this heady mix comes the revelation from CNN, confirmed by The Guardian, that Trump was caught on tape in July of 2021, pointing to a classified Pentagon document, apparently in his physical possession, which would “refute the idea that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley had been trying to stop him from starting a war with Iran.”
The admission, made to biographers of Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, was apparently a response to a New Yorker story by Susan Glasser which suggested that Milley tried to head off some of his boss’s more manic impulses during the transition period, including a possible strike on Iran.
According to Hugo Lowell, Trump had his assistant Margo Martin tape the interview, since he does not trust the media to accurately report his words. When Special Counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed her laptop, he found the recording on which Trump tells reporters that he regrets that the documents are still classified, and wishes that he’d declassified them before he left the White House.
So much for Trump’s lawyers spending a year insisting that Trump declassified everything via standing order. Or maybe with the power of his mind!
Never fear, however, because Jim Trusty will get everyone back on script.
After gamely repeating the lie about Barack Obama retaining thousands of classified documents, Trusty went on to insist that Trump “had the absolute authority to take every one of those documents — any document he wants with him when he left the White House.”
Pressed by Collins whether Trump declassified the documents when he landed at Mar-a-Lago in the last hour of his presidency, the attorney argued that “documents he brought with him are effectively declassified and personalized under the Presidential Records Act.”
“We’re talking about Constitutional authority under the Constitution to declassify,” Trusty blustered. “If he wants to take stuff with him and say ‘anything I take is declassified,’ if he wants to take stuff and say ‘anything I read at night is declassified,’ that was absolutely his right as president.
Note that Trusty did not go so far as to state as fact that Trump did have a declassification order along either of those lines. Nor did he make that allegation in any of his filings before Judge Aileen Cannon during the short-lived challenge to the FBI warrant to search Trump’s property in August. And if he tried it with Judge Howell, it clearly didn’t work.
Ah, well. Nothing for it but to keep digging, right?
Months of distrust inside Trump legal team led to top lawyer’s departure [Guardian]
Trump’s Lawyers Start to Wonder if One Could Be a Snitch [Daily Beast]
Trump Lawyers Consider Revenge for Former Colleague [Daily Beast]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.
