Trump Lawyer Joseph Tacopina Formerly Consulted With Stormy Daniels? Whoopsie!

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Stormy Daniels

What is it about Donald Trump that causes good lawyers to break bad? It’s a magical superpower that felled Rudy, Dersh, and too many others to count. And now it appears to have claimed another victim in the form of Joseph Tacopina, the celebrity defense lawyer representing Trump in both the E. Jean Carroll defamation/battery case and in the reportedly impending charges by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg arising out of the 2016 hush money payment to pornstar Stormy Daniels.

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As Just Security editor Ryan Goodman points out, Tacopina appears to have consulted with Daniels back in 2018 before she hired Michael Avenatti.

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Trump attorney Joe Tacopina has had an attorney-client relationship with Stormy Daniels.

Under ABA, NYS ethics rules, difficult to see how he can represent Trump; call Daniel’s claim of affair untrue; call her an extortionist (and Trump the victim).

In his own words in 2018👇 pic.twitter.com/I5Q25yMFWx

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) March 17, 2023

Goodman, a professor at NYU Law, notes that the conversation about the hush money payment created an attorney-client relationship under both ABA rules and New York’s Rules of Professional Conduct. Indeed, Tacopina admitted this to CNN’s Don Lemon five years ago, saying, “I can’t really talk about my impressions or any conversations we had because there is an attorney- client privilege that attaches even to a consultation.”

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And so his on-air antics this week, not to say his representation of Trump in a matter arising out of that payment to Daniels, seem even weirder. On Monday, Tacopina went on ABC’s Good Morning America and accused Daniels of extorting his client.

“This was a plain extortion, and I don’t know since when we’ve decided to start prosecuting extortion victims?” the lawyer huffed to George Stephanopoulos. “He’s vehemently denied this affair, but he had to pay the money because there was going to be an allegation that was going to be publicly embarrassing to him regardless of the campaign.”

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On Tuesday, he was practically manic with NBC’s Ari Melber, grabbing the papers out of the host’s hand and insisting that when Trump falsely claimed not to know about the hush money agreement, he wasn’t actually lying. He was actually protecting Daniels, the extortionist.

Here’s why it’s not a lie. Because it was a confidential settlement. So if he acknowledged that, he would be violating the confidential settlement. So, is it the truth? Of course it’s not the truth. Was he supposed to tell the truth? He would be in violation of the agreement if he told the truth. So by him doing that, he was abiding by, not only his rights, but Stormy Daniels’s rights.

This isn’t even the first time Tacopina has gotten caught making statements rubbishing Trump’s claims. On CNBC in 2020, he mocked Trump’s claim that he was acting in his official capacity when he denied E. Jean Carroll’s rape allegations and accused her of participating in a Democratic hoax.

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“Calling an alleged victim of rape … a liar is not an act in his official capacity,” he scoffed, adding later, “Although ad hominem attacks on members of the regular public may be a regular occurrence in the Oval Office these days, Article II of the Constitution does not include within the functions of the presidency the role of Chief Mudslinger.”

Tacopina now represents Trump in the related case filed in 2022 under New York’s newly enacted Adult Survivors Act. That suit also claims defamation because Trump repeated his original statement about Carroll, more or less verbatim, in October of 2022, long after he left office. Both cases are set to go to trial next month.

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Meanwhile, Daniels is reported to have testified to Bragg’s grand jury yesterday, and Trump himself rejected an offer to come in and testify without immunity — i.e., incriminate himself and/or commit perjury.

If indeed an indictment of Trump is imminent, it’s possible Bragg could move to disqualify Tacopina based on the prior attorney-client relationship with Daniels.

Bragg must prove: "(1) the existence of a prior attorney-client relationship [check], (2) that the matters involved in both representations are substantially related [check], and (3) that the interests of the present client and former client are materially adverse." Checkmate. /3

— Opening Arguments (@openargs) March 17, 2023

On the other hand, Tacopina seems inclined to go on television and rant about his client’s legal strategy at length, so perhaps he’s worth keeping around.

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

Topics

Courts, Donald Trump, Joe Tacopina, Legal Ethics, Stormy Daniels