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It's almost as if stiffing his previous lawyers has made people wary. Strange.
Well, that, and contradicting them and incriminating himself publicly like 5 minutes after the lawyers make their statements doesn't help either.
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that this is not the actual problem that is keeping lawyers away.
Many freelancers are ok to get paid and do their best work for customers who will then destroy that work and shoot themselves in the foot. It’s frustrating, but as long as you get paid, after all it’s the customer’s problem. Lawyers are the same, you can find a number of them who won’t mind.
But here my understanding of what happened was that Trump made his lawyer sign a document where he personally committed to have checked everywhere and there were no documents left, all the while Trump was lying to him and there absolutely were hidden documents. So if that lawyer had kept defending Trump, it could have come across as him being in on the lie to the feds, and being liable to the same crimes.
A lot of lawyers will be glad to take hard-earned money from frustrating clients, but won’t be keen to get themselves in actual legal trouble.
This looks a likely a big part of it, and then we also have reports from MSNBC that at least some of the evidence being presented against him came from one of his lawyers. It could have been a former lawyer and not one of the two that recently resigned, but if it was one of these two they would have to resign or risk personal legal consequences.
Trump seems to have taken the view that plotting illegal things with his lawyer is smart due to attorney client confidentiality (see Cohen), not understanding that confidentiality specifically does not protect discussions related to new crimes. No one can force your attorney to disclose that you told him you were guilty, but if you ask them to help you suppress evidence or intimidate a witness, nothing stops the attorney from turning you in, and they have reasons to do just that as you’ve just made them complicit in your new crime and that is not protected by privilege.
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The common joke from the other place was MAGA stood for make attorneys get attorneys. It's one thing to get paid in exposure, but it's alright another thing to get "paid" in legal exposure. As an attorney what do you do? Can you really include a weasel statement in every filing saying "this is what he told me, I have no idea if it's true but it's it's not then it's not my ass"?
Trump's built a reputation as being a hard client to represent. Even worse is that Trump attorneys have had some notably batshit crazy examples that makes it challenging to one's reputation to get lumped in with. Good attorneys have had to quit their firms in order to represent Trump.
Heck, the current vacancies are because they saw what they were up against and noped out. It's like if a place has 1.2 stars on Glassdoor, are you really gonna risk your career and jump ship to them?
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Also, the evidence is very damning. This will be a hard case to win for Trump. Do you want to be the lawyer that lost the case that sent Trump to go to jail? I mean, I would love to be that lawyer but I'm not a lawyer so I don't care about my reputation
You'd think someone would want the case just for it's historic nature. Whoever takes the job is in the history books.
I don’t think being attached to Trump’s name is worth it for most attorneys, even for “history” since they’re on the wrong side of it and also not getting paid. Being in the books isn’t very much worth it if you’re also broke and in jail with your client.
The Venn diagram of lawyers that see this as good press for themselves and the lawyers that have the experience and record to work a case of this magnitude has an exceedingly slim overlapping area at this point. We’ve seen very good lawyers come and go from his team when he seemed eccentric but able to be represented and as that veil lifted the talent pool has shrunk. I’m not ragging on the people that agree to represent him - no matter the person or crime, they are entitled to competent representation and someone has to do it - but several of them have just been completely out of their depth.
Thanks for gifting the WaPo article. Interesting stuff. Will he choose the scorched earth defense or the "flip one jurist" strategy. My guess is the former. He can't help himself.
He had plenty of opportunities to give the documents back and either say "oops, how'd that get there" or even do something outrageous like return it and then try to blame it on Obama, but instead he chose to repeatedly double down on "the rules don't apply to me".
I don’t imagine this will happen to Trump, but really what happens if you can’t find get a lawyer to represent you. Not because you can’t afford one. But because none will take you on as a client!
The poor public defender that would get that case…
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Coordinated delay tactic. His goal is to delay until he is President again and pardon himself.
Possibly joking, but I really do think this is just another delay tactic. It's what he does, and it has worked so far.
That’s completely wild to me that a president can pardon himself. Wtf?
There's a lot of controversy about this and the legal opinions are still out on it. It's generally accepted that he can't do that but it's never been tested in court.
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MAGA: Make Attorneys Get Attorneys
I can imagine. Enough of his lawyers have been fucked over I'd want no part of that for all of King Midas' silver.
Trump should get one of those sovrin sitizin types to defend him.
Your honor, some would say not honored, as the rightful greatest president of America, I’m declaring Martian law. As ruler of Mars me and my sons Deimos and Phobos Jr can’t be judged this court under maritime law. Over ruled, sustained, Make Mars Great Again!
This is why you should pay the contractors you hire!
The last few big name lawyers he hired required a massive retainer before they agreed to represent him, so I don’t think that’s the issue. It’s probably more about no lawyer wanting to put their reputation on the line since he is notoriously difficult client, who often doesn’t follow the advice of legal counsel but then turns around and blames them when his case inevitably tanks.
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this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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