Two ex-Trump lawyers point out the danger

Parlatore is not the first Trump attorney to cite infighting within Trump’s legal circle — and, notably, to decide to go public. Nor is Cobb the first to move from defending Trump to pointing out his self-inflicted legal peril.

Parlatore insisted his departure did not stem from Trump or the substance of his defense in the classified documents case. But he suggested that Ephsteyn was indeed compromising that defense.

“The real reason is that there are certain people who have made defending the president much more difficult than necessary,” Parlatore said. “In particular, there is an individual who works for him, Boris Epshteyn, who had really done everything to try to block us – to stop us from doing what we could to defend the president.”

He said Ephsteyn “served as a sort of filter to prevent us from passing information to the client.”

“In my opinion, he wasn’t very honest with us or with the client about some things,” Parlatore added. “There were certain things like research that he tried to interfere with.”

Ephsteyn declined to comment to The Washington Post.

It’s unusual for a lawyer to go public with such beef, especially so soon after they’ve left (Parlatore left the legal team last week). One way to figure it out would be that Parlatore is just This upset. But there’s also a long history of Trump allies deciding to air these things publicly on cable news in the apparent hope that the message will be received by the “audience of one,” Trump.

To the extent that it’s the latter, it would seem like an ominous sign of how Parlatore believes Trump’s defense is progressing at a crucial time.

This isn’t the first time Parlatore has at least flagged potential problems within Trump’s legal team. Just last month, he raised his eyebrows as he hinted at “some potential conflict issues” from Trump attorney Joe Tacopina in the Stormy Daniels case. (Daniels once contacted Tacopina seeking representation.) He praised the case’s other lead attorney, Susan Necheles, before raising the issue of the potential conflict. When pressed further per CNN he said, “I’m not going to comment on Joe Tacopina.”

The new comments are also reminiscent of Trump’s second impeachment, after which his attorney David Schoen offered candid thoughts about fellow legal team member Bruce Castor. Castor was added to the team late, and Schoen indicated there was confusion over who was taking the lead.

“So he got up and said, ‘I think I better jump over here,'” Schoen told Jewish Insider of Castor in the much-ridiculed and rambling opening statement. “He jumped in and obviously it was like a buccaneer. It was not a good presentation.

“I thought, ‘This guy’s career is going to fade away,'” Schoen said, adding, “He still thought he did a good job.”

Trump was acquitted, but not before a historic number of Republicans voted to convict him.

All of these comments point to a lack of order within Trump’s legal team and seem to help explain why Trump’s cast of attorneys has long been a revolving door.

Cobb, meanwhile, also seemed to point to the Trump team’s mishandling of the classified documents case — he noted that they claimed all of those documents had been found, when in fact they didn’t. didn’t – while predicting that Trump would “go to jail”. ”

“And the many other false statements he and others have made on his behalf regarding his possession of classified documents,” Cobb said on CNN. “So I think it’s – I think this obstruction case is a tight case. And, yeah, I think he’s going to jail for it.

Similarly, former Trump attorney general William P. Barr said the Justice Department likely had enough evidence to “legitimately” indict Trump.

“He had no rights to these documents, especially the classified documents,” Barr added last month. “They belong to the government. And so I think he was shaking the government, and they subpoenaed him, and they tried to convince them to hand over the documents.

And then, of course, there’s another former Trump attorney, Michael Cohen, who has proven to be a pivotal figure in driving the only case Trump has been indicted in so far, the Daniels case. Hush Money.

In many ways, this is a consequence of the chaos that has plagued the Trump presidential administration. Many high-ranking officials found themselves alienated and ended up warning the country about what was happening and even denouncing Trump. Trump in turn attacked them and dismissed them as disloyal.

But at some point, if you’re the team leading Trump’s high-stakes legal defense — where such political arguments don’t work as well — it might help to internalize those warning signs about what’s going on. can happen to us.

The Trump team, however, appears to be heading in a different direction. Parlatore suggested on Saturday that he might even return to Trump’s legal team if the issues were resolved.

Team Trump’s response? That Parlatore’s “statements regarding current members of the legal team are baseless and categorically false.”