Trump Struggles to Find Enough Lawyers to Handle
His Many Indictments
The former president wants to use a Jan. 6 trial as a
platform for his election lies. But his team is struggling to find attorneys
willing to go along
BY ADAM
RAWNSLEY, ASAWIN SUEBSAENG
JULY 26,
2023
DONALD
TRUMP COULD be days away from another indictment, but as a third set of
criminal charges looms, he’s struggling to recruit lawyers to defend him, three
sources familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone.
In recent
weeks, the Trump team has tried, with mixed results, to bring aboard new
lawyers to defend against an expected indictment over Trump’s efforts to
overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack — even as Special
Counsel Jack Smith has signaled his office is ready to bring charges.
The
recruiting effort has been fraught for several reasons. Trump, the people
familiar with the matter say, is an infamously difficult client. One attorney
who was approached about work declined, telling Rolling Stone they were
dissuaded by the lengthy track record of Trump’s personal lawyers suddenly
finding themselves in legal jeopardy while working for Trump. Some attorneys
who’ve discussed the investigation with Trump and his close associates believe
the case is a certain loser for the defense, arguing, among other things, that
Trump’s loss at the initial trial is a foregone conclusion in Washington, D.C.
The
district is a deep-blue area and still carries the memory of the Jan. 6 attack.
And in the past several weeks, some of Donald Trump’s top legal and political
advisers have been privately calling the job of defending Trump against an
indictment in the election 2020 case a “suicide mission.”
Other
lawyers approached about joining, according to two of the sources, were
initially receptive before pulling out because of concerns from their peers.
Partners at their respective firms objected to taking on Trump as a client,
arguing the firm would lose other clients as a result. Those concerns have been
a big part of why Team Trump has hit a brick wall while trying to entice
big-name law firms to join his cause.
Even
high-profile lawyers who continue to defend Trump publicly aren’t signing up
for this one. As Rolling Stone reported last month, Alan Dershowitz — the
celebrity attorney who was part of then-President Trump’s defense for his first
impeachment — “has been declining recurring offers from Trump and his advisers
to rep the ex-president in different cases since 2021,” and did so again as
recently as June. The recruiting struggles come after Trump lost several
lawyers last month when his legal team for the Mar-a-Lago documents case
imploded. These attorneys had also been working on legal strategy for a
possible Jan. 6-related indictment.
But even as
his legal team looks to staff up, their client is focused on turning a
potential trial into an opportunity to relitigate his bogus election fraud
theories. Trump has privately told members of his team this summer that, should
prosecutors bring a Jan. 6-related case against him, he wants the trial to be
used as a platform to promote his false claim to have won in 2020, according to
two people with direct knowledge of the matter. Additionally, Trump has said
that during the trial — which he’s hoping will be televised — his lawyers
should display “proof” of Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
The
developments highlight the continuing legal peril Trump faces as the special
counsel’s second investigation heats up. The special counsel’s office sent
Trump a target letter last week indicating that the grand jury was
investigating him for conspiracy to commit a crime or defraud the U.S.,
obstruction, and conspiracy against rights. Over the past few months,
investigators from Smith’s office have focused on Trump’s role in the efforts
to pressure Mike Pence to throw out electoral votes from battleground states
and replace them with slates of bogus pro-Trump electors.
According
to three sources familiar with the situation, the former president and his
allies privately argue that Trump’s chances in this case if brought before a
judge and jury in the overwhelmingly Democratic Washington, DC — where a
potential trial is expected to occur — are slim. Team Trump’s anxieties over
likely losing in the nation’s capital mirror Trump’s lawyers’ early warnings to
him that he should be prepared to lose the initial trial to Manhattan District
Attorney Alvin Bragg, and hope to win it on appeal.
Since 2021,
Trump has at times retained legal counsel who have been squeamish about
parroting Trump’s easily debunked lies about election “FRAUD,” and have often
tried to work around the ex-president’s demands for wild bluster.
However,
Trump may not have that problem with his new, and still-forming, legal team
handling the special counsel’s Jan. 6 probe.
The legal
strategy currently taking form at the top ranks of Trumpworld is currently
leaning heavily on the kind of calculated hostility, brashness, and media
spectacle that the former president has long relished, the sources familiar
with the situation tell Rolling Stone.
Already,
the newest addition to this legal team — John Lauro, the one attorney who was
announced last week — has demonstrated a public willingness to do just that. (Lauro
and other top Trump attorneys did not respond to messages and calls seeking
comment on this story.)
In an
appearance on Fox News last week, Lauro insinuated that the special counsel’s
fast-moving grand jury investigation of Trump was an attempt to distract from
Congressional Republicans’ corruption allegations against President Biden and
President Trump’s poll numbers.
“On Sunday
night, the [former] president gets an invitation to appear before a grand jury
in the same week that Joe Biden is ensnarled in a massive bribery allegation at
the same time that [former] President Trump is leading in the polls. Something
is going on here that’s not quite right,” Lauro said during the cable
television segment.
He argued
that Trump’s efforts to overturn the election was justified by “all of these
election discrepancies and irregularities going on” and that there should be
“cameras in the courtroom so all Americans can see what’s happening in our
criminal justice system.”
Federal
courts have generally banned the use of cameras in the courtroom. While
individual judges may authorize them in certain circumstances, their use is
rare.
It’s
unclear how a legal strategy that sought to litigate the results of the 2020
election would play out in the Washington, DC district court, where judges can
sometimes display little patience with attorneys.
Judges in
Washington, D.C.’s federal district court have presided over a number of
January 6-related cases and shown little willingness to allow cases to turn
into broader political fights over the 2020 election. In cases ranging from
Steve Bannon’s defiance of a congressional subpoena to rioters seeking to call,
federal judges in Washington, DC have warned they would reject any attempts to turn
courtrooms into a “political circus” and blocked attempts to call Trump, Rudy
Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others as witnesses in the case of accused
rioters.
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