Donald Trump Loses Yet Another Lawyer

// The rotating cast of Trumpland lawyers lost a character this week as Timothy Parlatore departs for greener pastures.

“It’s been an incredible honor to serve and work through interesting legal issues. My departure was a personal choice and does not reflect upon the case, as I believe strongly the (Justice Department) team is engaging in misconduct to pursue an investigation of conduct that is not criminal,” he told CNN, which broke the story this morning.

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Parlatore has represented Trump in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into classified document retention and the former president’s role in the January 6 Capitol Riot. In that capacity, Parlatore supervised the court-ordered search of several Trump properties last year which turned up two more classified documents. He was then subpoenaed to testify to the grand jury, joining attorneys Evan Corcoran, Alina Habba, and Christina Bobb among Trump’s counsel who have had to go under oath in the investigation of their client.

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“They repeatedly tried to ask me about my conversations with President Trump, which is totally outside the scope of what I was there for,” Parlatore huffed to CNN.

In fact, Parlatore is not the first lawyer on the documents case who’s departed the scene. In March, the Justice Department persuaded Judge Beryl Howell and a panel at the DC Circuit that the crime-fraud exception applied to Corcoran’s communications with the former president, after which Corcoran recused himself from that part of Trump’s defense. Parlatore will be hard to replace on the documents team — there aren’t so many lawyers willing to put their names on a letter to Congress demanding that it call off the Justice Department and force it halt a criminal investigation.

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“The White House staff simply swept all documents from the president’s desk and other areas into boxes, where they have resided ever since,” Parlatore told House Intel Chair Mike Turner, bizarrely blaming the General Services Administration for Trump’s retention of government property for eighteen months, despite multiple polite requests for its return, followed by a subpoena.

Parlatore’s departure will leave a hole (of sorts) in the the January 6 case as well. Along with Jim Trusty and John Rowley, Parlatore has attempted to convince courts to allow Trump’s invocation of executive privilege to block testimony by upwards of a dozen former officials. This effort has been uniformly unsuccessful, and even Mike Pence has now testified, suggesting that there are no higher up officials left to call. If there are further witnesses to fight about, Trusty and Rowley will soldier on somehow.

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Trump’s rotating stable of lawyers is a catty bunch, constantly carping to reporters about whose stock is up or down. Most recently, Joseph Tacopina, who represents Trump in the New York civil prosecution and the E. Jean Carroll case has been described as a “loudmouth” by his fellow Trumpland attorneys. Parlatore, was brought into the fold by Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s lawyer/fixer/season seven Michael Cohen, a particular target of scorn from his fellow courtiers.

In its article confirming Parlatore’s departure, the New York Times described Epshteyn as having “a penchant for delivering sunny news to Mr. Trump despite bad circumstances, and for creating a bottleneck for the lawyers in dealing with the client, according to several people familiar with the events.” Prior reporting by the Times has Epshteyn at the center of the fake electors scheme, and indeed he has been subpoenaed by both federal grand juries, as well as the special purpose grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia. And while Epshteyn’s stock remains high with Trump, he has been blamed for some of the dumber litigation Trump wandered into, such as the lawsuits against New York Attorney General Letitia James and the Pulitzer prize board, both of which were filed in state court. He also had his phone seized by the FBI — which might make a lawyer persona non grata in any other circle, but seems to have had no effect on Epshteyn’s status.

“Boris has access to information and a network that is useful to us,” Parlatore told the Times back in March. “It’s good to have someone who’s a lawyer who is also inside the palace gates.”

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Perhaps Parlatore concluded that it’s wisest to get out of blast radius before the indictments start dropping. Maybe he decided not to test the theory that if you stick around Trump long enough, you turn into Rudy Giuliani. Or maybe he just got sick of the vibe.

Luckily, no one in Trumpworld ever leaks, so Parlatore’s secret should be safe … for a whole ten minutes more.

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Key Trump attorney departs legal team [CNN]
Trump Lawyer Resigns From Defense Team in Special Counsel Inquiries [NYT]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

Topics

Department of Justice, Donald Trump, Jack Smith, Timothy Parlatore