Top Trump allies facing charges lose lawyers
after failing to pay legal bills
Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell, who
pushed false claims about the 2020 election, face six- and seven-figure bills
Peter Stone
in Washington
Tue 31 Oct
2023 11.00 GMT
A trio of
top Donald Trump allies who have racked up huge legal expenses to defend
themselves from either criminal charges, convictions or defamation lawsuits
have lost key lawyers for failing to pay six- and seven-figure bills in a sign
of the huge legal problems they face.
The hefty
legal bills of the ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon, former Trump lawyer Rudy
Giuliani and MyPillow CEO, Mike Lindell, underscore the scale of the criminal
and civil charges that ensnare them.
Welcome to
the escalating legal and financial headaches plaguing three of the former US
president’s top loyalists who pushed various false claims about his 2020
election loss to Joe Biden that helped provide cover for Trump’s election
falsehoods.
The list of
legal woes is long.
Bannon has
a court appeal slated for November over his criminal conviction last year and
pending four-month jail sentence for obstructing Congress by spurning a
subpoena from the House panel that was investigating the January 6
insurrection.
Bannon also
faces a trial next May in New York related to state fraud, conspiracy and
money-laundering charges that he bilked donors in a Mexican wall project,
dubbed “We Build the Wall.”
Meanwhile,
Giuliani was charged in August with 13 criminal counts in Georgia by the Fulton
county district attorney, Fani Willis, who also charged Trump and 17 others as
part of a conspiracy to thwart Trump’s 2020 loss there. Pressures on Giuliani
escalated in October when three other ex-Trump lawyers he worked with in
varying ways agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors.
Further,
Lindell is fighting $2bn defamation lawsuits by electronic voting machine firms
he has claimed helped rig the 2020 against Trump, which have cost him millions
of dollars in legal fees owed to a Minneapolis law firm.
In October,
the law firm formally asked a court to allow it to withdraw from representing
Lindell in these cases, citing millions of dollars it was owed.
On another
legal front, a top lawyer for Bannon and Giuliani has ditched them and filed
big claims for monies owed. Robert Costello and his firm, which has represented
both Giuliani and Bannon, have filed separate claims against the duo,
respectively, for $1.4m and $480,000.
A court
judgment has been issued against Bannon for the $480,000, which he is fighting
with the help of lawyer Harlan Protass. It is unclear when and how much
Giuliani may pay Costello and his firm. But a legal source familiar with
Giuliani’s seven-figure debt faults Trump not Giuliani for the unpaid bill,
claiming that Trump at a meeting with Costello and Giuliani earlier this year
in Florida said he would “take care of” Giuliani’s legal bill.
On top of
their past-due legal bills, Giuliani and Bannon now are also locked in other
high-stakes legal battles.
In Georgia,
Giuliani’s legal situation seems to have become more perilous: lawyers Jenna
Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell who worked in varying ways with
Giuliani as he pushed false claims in Georgia and elsewhere about Trump’s loss,
pleaded guilty in October, and agreed to cooperate with Willis’s office
Giuliani
has called his indictment a “travesty”, but ex-prosecutors say that he faces
new pressures in the wake of other Trump lawyers’ plea deals.
“As
expected, the dominoes have started to fall in Georgia with three plea
agreements by key Trump lawyers who in different ways worked with Rudy,” Paul
Pelletier, the ex-acting chief of the fraud section at the justice department,
told the Guardian.
“Rudy too
may want to plead and cooperate to reduce his exposure, but no prosecutor in
their right mind would use him as a cooperating witness. There’s simply no way
to undo the entrenched legacy of his outlandish behavior.”
Other
ex-prosecutors concur that Giuliani’s credentials as a witness are tarnished.
“Rudy’s
under huge pressure, but he’s unlikely to flip because that would be the
rational thing to do,” ex-prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig told the Guardian.
Still some
justice department veterans say Giuliani may try to cut a deal.
“Giuliani
must be concerned that Powell and Ellis will testify against him and add to the
likelihood of conviction,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for
eastern Michigan, told the Guardian. “It may not be in Giuliani’s DNA to admit
wrongdoing, but now would be the time to pursue a deal from Fani Willis if he
is willing to plead guilty.”
Giuliani
reportedly has not been offered a plea deal so far, and Giuliani’s spokesman
has nixed the idea of accepting one.
In another
blow in Georgia, Giuliani was found liable in August for making defamatory
comments about two Georgia election workers, and later ordered to pay their
legal fees and turn over evidence to them.
Further,
the voting technology firm Smartmatic in August skewered Giuliani in court
filings, charging him with making up “excuse after excuse” to avoid handing
over documents in its $2.7bn defamation lawsuit against him, Fox News, and
others who pushed lies about the 2020 election results.
Despite his
mounting problems, Giuliani has kept some longtime allies. John Catsimatidis,
the billionaire owner of WABC radio, where Giuliani has a daily radio program,
told the Guardian that Giuliani “earns good money with us. He gets paid
monthly.” Catsimatidis added that: “I pray he’s found innocent.”
Although
Bannon’s legal problems differ, they are just as intense, if not more so.
The
combative Trump ally, known for his far-right War Room podcast, was convicted
last year and sentenced to four months in jail for obstruction of Congress by
flouting subpoenas to cooperate with the House January 6 panel.
Bannon
appealed the conviction and a court hearing is slated for November.
Although
Judge Carl Nichols, in granting Bannon an appeal of his conviction, left the
door open to a possible reversal or new trial, ex-prosecutors do not think
Bannon’s conviction is likely to be reversed.
“I think
Bannon‘s conviction is on very solid ground,” McQuade told the Guardian. “He
failed to even appear when subpoenaed by Congress. If he thought he had a good
faith basis for a testimonial privilege, the way to assert it would have been
to show up and answer all other questions, and to assert the privilege on a
question-by-question basis. He failed to do even that.
“Moreover,
because he was not an executive branch employee during the relevant time
period, his claims of executive privilege are flimsy to nonexistent.”
Other
ex-prosecutors are dubious that Bannon’s appeal will succeed.
“Even
though Judge Nichols said Bannon’s appeal was serious, it is not. Bannon has
almost no chance of overturning his conviction. He’s manifestly guilty,”
Rosenzweig told the Guardian.
Separately,
Bannon is due to stand trial next May on New York state charges that he
defrauded donors to his non-profit “We Build the Wall” project, which already
has led to three pleas or convictions of Bannon associates.
Bannon’s
trial will be in the same court in Manhattan that ruled he owed Costello’s law
firm $480,000. His lawyer is slated to be Protass, who is appealing the court’s
fee decision against Bannon which he has called “clearly wrong”.
Bannon has
pleaded not guilty to the charges of defrauding donors.
Right
before Trump left office in early 2021 he pardoned Bannon, who had been
indicted on similar federal fraud charges for his role in “We Build the Wall”.
Notwithstanding
his mounting legal threats, Bannon remains an aggressive and busy Trump ally.
In October, he used his War Room podcast to host some of Trump’s most far-right
Maga allies like the Florida representative Matt Gaetz, who played a key role
in ousting the former House speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Some
ex-Republican congressmen view Bannon as a disruptive, pro-Trump political
force. “Bannon always struck me as a leader of the nihilist wing of the GOP
coalition,” ex-Republican congressman Charlie Dent told the Guardian. “His
intervention with the speaker’s race was clearly a problem and advanced Trump’s
interest in the House.”
“He’s like
Trump: all grievances, all the time.”
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