For someone who’s spent years bragging about the unimpeachable (heh) caliber of the people he surrounds himself with, Donald Trump has seemingly burned his way through so many lawyers of various degrees of skill that, as he faces one of the most significant legal threats of his life, he reportedly finds himself struggling to land representation up to this latest task.
In fact, as The Washington Post noted Wednesday, the former president has spent the past week being repeatedly rejected by seasoned attorneys he’s approached in hopes of enticing them onto his legal team, following the FBI’s court-approved search of his Mar-a-Lago estate. In the absence of experienced professionals who have breathed the rarified air of practicing law at the uppermost federal levels, Trump’s team currently features, per the Post, “a Florida insurance lawyer who’s never had a federal case, a past general counsel for a parking-garage company, and a former host at far-right One America News.”
It’s hardly a mystery why there might be sizable trepidation to take on Trump as a client from within the legal world. Before becoming president, Trump’s closest attorneys ranged from one of the most hated figures in the country to a one-time personal injury lawyer who became the former president’s personal “fixer,” before he himself was convicted on a host of financial crimes. And as the scale of alleged crimes in which Trump has become enmeshed has grown, so too has the personal and professional peril for those who’ve chosen to take him on as a client. Former federal prosecutor and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, once the most popular political figure in the country, has seen his law license revoked, his reputation implode, and now faces both financial and personal ruin as a direct result of working for Trump. (As I write this very blog, Giuliani is busy testifying before a grand jury about his involvement in attempted election interference in Georgia in 2020.) So too with Trump associate Sidney Powell, whose plummet from federal prosecutor to embarrassing afterthought has been similarly precipitous. It’s little wonder that experienced attorneys are wary about taking on a client notorious for not only ending careers, but adding insult to injury by stiffing them on the bill, too.
“In olden days, he would tell firms representing him was a benefit because they could advertise off it. Today it’s not the same,” Trump’s one-time personal attorney Michael Cohen told the Post. “He’s also a very difficult client in that he’s always pushing the envelope, he rarely listens to sound legal advice, and he wants you to do things that are not appropriate, ethically or legally.”
“President Trump is represented by some of the strongest attorneys in the country,” a spokesperson for the former president meanwhile told the Post. “Any suggestion otherwise is only driven by envy.”
Somehow, I doubt it.
