Trump Brags About All The Lawyers Dying To Represent Him At Party For Capitol Rioters
You wouldn't know them. They live in Canada.
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Last night, Donald Trump addressed a group calling itself “Patriot Freedom Project” at his private club in Bedminster, New Jersey. The event was a fundraiser for January 6 defendants, whom Trump has often promised to pardon.
It was a typically rambling speech which began with a description of Portland, Oregon as a post-apocalyptic hellscape, before segueing into a denunciation of the “Biden crime family.” He then moved on to praise the brave Americans who descended on the Capitol to block the electoral certification, while simultaneously claiming that “BLM and Antifa” were responsible for much of the violence. And that was only in the first three minutes.
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Then he started in on all the lawyers who are dying to come and work for him.
They all come, and they all want to help. The biggest people. Some of the biggest people, the biggest law firms, the biggest lawyers, I say, “Listen, I don’t need any help. I don’t need any help in campaigns. We have so many people that are going to vote for us. I want you to guard the vote.”
It’s not entirely clear whether Trump was referring lawyers working for him in a personal capacity, or those working for his campaign. Indeed he seems to see very little difference between the two, and in the White House demanded that the Attorney General behave as his personal defender. He reportedly complained, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” when he thought government attorneys weren’t behaving enough like his legendary personal fixer.
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In either interpretation, Trump’s account bears all the hallmarks of a classic “sir story” — i.e. it’s total bullshit.
Trump is the world’s worst client. In the best case scenario, he ignores his lawyers’ advice, gets himself indicted and/or sued because he can’t shut the hell up, and then fires them. In the worst case scenario, he does all of the above, but then makes them a target of his lunatic supporters, as he did last week, calling former attorney general Bill Barr “a ‘disgruntled former employee’ & lazy Attorney General who was weak & totally ineffective” and a “Gutless Pig.”
Gone are the days when he could order up a squad of attorneys from Kirkland & Ellis or Jones Day, and not just because he has a terrible reputation for stiffing his clients. As his former attorney Timothy Parlatore acknowledged in a recent interview with Politico, the “biggest law firms” won’t get near Trump because of the reputational cost of being associated with a guy who fomented an insurrection and makes fun of rape victims.
Chris Kise, the former Florida Solicitor General, got paid $3 million by Trump’s PAC to leave Hogan & Lovells, because he could work for Trump or he could stay in biglaw — but he couldn’t do both. Similarly, Todd Blanche had to resign from Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft before he could represent the former president in his criminal indictments.
Meanwhile, Trump is having a hell of a time finding a criminal lawyer barred in Florida to take his case. As The Guardian reports, Kise and Blanche spent last weekend interviewing candidates, with one prominent lawyer pulling out after his partners nixed it.
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And the record is scarcely better for Trump’s campaign counsel. Cleta Mitchell’s partners at Foley & Lardner pushed her out approximately five seconds after it emerged that she’d been freelancing for Trump’s campaign, including sitting in on the phone call pressuring Georgia Secretary of Stat Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.” Multiple attorneys, including Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell, have faced bar complaints for their involvement with the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the election. John Eastman, who “retired” from his position at Chapman University’s law school when his role in the electoral coup plot was revealed, is at this very moment defending his bar license in a California courtroom. And no tale is more cautionary than that of Rudy Giuliani.
But if there is a runner up, it is perhaps Jeff “We’ll Call You If There’s an Oil Spill” Clark, the onetime Kirland partner who had his phone seized by the FBI after trying to get the Justice Department embroiled in an effort to overturn the election. Like Cleta Mitchell, he’s landed a plum spot on the wingnut welfare gravy train, although his main job appears to be ranting inanities on Twitter.
And, hey wouldn’t you know, Clark was in attendance last night for Trump’s speech in New Jersey. Not as an object lesson for what can happen when lawyers break bad, and presumably not as counsel for Trump. Clark was, in fact, one of the other speakers at the fundraiser.
These jokes write themselves.
Trump spoke at a fundraiser for Jan. 6 defendants [NBC]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.
