Grab some popcorn and sit down for a very entertaining read from Hugo Lowell at The Guardian.
The turmoil inside the legal team only exploded into public view when one of the top lawyers, Tim Parlatore, abruptly resigned two weeks ago from the representation citing irreconcilable differences with Trump’s senior adviser and in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn.
But the departure of Parlatore was the culmination of months of simmering tensions that continue to threaten the effectiveness of the legal team at a crucial time – as federal prosecutors weigh criminal charges – in part because the interpersonal conflicts remain largely unresolved.
It also comes as multiple Trump lawyers are embroiled in numerous criminal investigations targeting the former president: Epshteyn was recently interviewed by the special counsel, while Parlatore and Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran testified to the grand jury in the classified documents inquiry.
The turmoil has revolved around hostility among the lawyers on the legal team who have come to distrust each other as well as their hostility directed at Epshteyn, over what they regard as his oversight of the legal work and gatekeeping direct access to the former president.
In one instance, the clashes became so acute that some of the lawyers agreed to a so-called “murder-suicide” pact where if Parlatore got fired, others would resign in solidarity. And as some of the lawyers tried to exclude Epshteyn, they withheld information from co-counsel who they suspected might brief him.
The infighting eventually reached the point at which some of the lawyers started to believe the biggest impediment to defending Trump might just be the distrust and interpersonal conflict, rather than someone like Parlatore deciding to cooperate with prosecutors.
In fact, the legal team is said to be confident that Parlatore will not flip on Trump after he told the grand jury hearing evidence in the case last year that Trump gave him free rein to search for any remaining documents at his properties last year, according to a transcript of his testimony.
But an eventual attempt to remove Epshteyn from the case ended in failure, and Epshteyn remains a trusted member of Trump’s inner circle. The months of worsening relations that led to that moment were described to the Guardian by six people familiar with the situation.
[…]
Palm Beach dinner foreshadows divisiveness
The animosity inside the Trump legal team started almost immediately after the FBI seized 101 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago last August, when Trump’s lawyers asked a federal judge to appoint a special master to review the materials for any privilege protections.
The legal team, at the time, was composed of the former federal prosecutors Jim Trusty and Evan Corcoran – whose search for classified documents in response to a subpoena later proved incomplete – the former Florida solicitor general Chris Kise and the lawyer Lindsey Halligan.
The lawyers presented a united front as they argued to the US district court judge Aileen Cannon that she should grant a special master, which she did – a strategic win for Trump that enabled him to delay the criminal investigation and prosecutors’ ability to review the documents.
But Trusty, who played a leading role in the special master litigation, was already frustrated with how things were going.
Trusty’s private frame of mind emerged over dinner with Halligan and Corcoran at the five-star Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, hours after the special master court hearing. The conversation was overheard by this Guardian reporter who happened to be sitting at the table next to them.
They were sitting next to Hugo Lowell while they were blabbing in a public place? How many times is this going to happen with Trump’s lawyers? Remember that Ty Cobb was overheard by a reporter in a different restaurant in DC. What big mouths they all are.
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. He also said he had no interest in talking to reporters from the publication Lawfare or the New York Times on account of their coverage.
Read on for the full catastrophe. These are supposed to be top lawyers defending the former president of the United States and putative head of the Republican Party. They are a mess, just like their client.
The problem, of course, is that Trump is likely to win the nomination even if he’s under indictment. But it’s going to be a shitshow in any case.