After one of President Trumps’s lead lawyers, John Dowd, resigned last week, reportedly because he was sick of the president ignoring his advice, Trump went on an interviewing spree to find someone else to take on the most high profile legal case in the world right now.
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His first pick, former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the man who put George W. Bush in the White House after successfully petitioning the Supreme Court to stop the Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election, turned him down supposedly because of his firm’s conflicts with other clients under investigation in the Russia probe.
Then Trump announced he was bringing the husband and wife team of Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing on board. Both were known for their legal commentary on cable news channels, including Trump’s BFF Fox News where diGenova was known for framing the Mueller probe as a “deep state conspiracy” to take the president down.
Today, the White House announced that Trump would not be hiring the pair as part of his legal team in defending himself in the Russia inquiry after all, according to a report in The New York Times.
“The president is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining the president’s special counsel legal team,” Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said in a statement on Sunday morning. “However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters. The president looks forward to working with them.”
While Sekulow cites conflicts as the reason for the change of heart, after the president met with the pair last week, insiders said that Trump didn’t feel any personal chemistry with the couple.
With his legal team in disarray, Trump faces a crucial week in his legal woes without a full strength advisory lineup. With the Stormy Daniels interview scheduled to be broadcast tonight on 60 Minutes and numerous former mistresses and sexual assault victims suing both in actual court and the court of public opinion, the president is going to need all the legal assistance he can get when you add the tightening pincers of the Mueller probe to the mix.
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With many legal analysts speculating that the most talented attorneys are staying as far away as possible from what they see as a thankless and unpleasant assignment, President Trump issued a defensive tweet this morning to supplement the official statement on his legal representation status.
Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case…don’t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on. Fame & fortune will NEVER be turned down by a lawyer, though some are conflicted. Problem is that a new……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 25, 2018
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….lawyer or law firm will take months to get up to speed (if for no other reason than they can bill more), which is unfair to our great country – and I am very happy with my existing team. Besides, there was NO COLLUSION with Russia, except by Crooked Hillary and the Dems!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 25, 2018
Take action now to demand Congress stop Trump from firing Special Prosecutor Mueller!
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Now here’s a tweet that perhaps inadvertently discloses the president’s psychological inner workings more than he realizes. Trump’s own obsessions with “fame & fortune” are the filter through which he views the world, so he can’t fathom any other motives for an attorney to want to or not want to work with him.
His imputation of a profit motive behind the time it takes a legal team to get up to speed, rather than the hard work they’d need to do to simply read through the thousands of documents related to the case, is the kind of thinking you’d only find in someone who doesn’t actually read and is so motivated by greed himself that again he can’t imagine any other scenario.
Of course, Trump can’t send a tweet without signing off with an all-caps declaration that there was “no collusion with Russia, except by Crooked Hillary and the Dems!”
That’s a message to his base who, fed only a diet of Fox News sycophancy, haven’t heard the ever-growing mound of details proving the exact opposite, including the secret meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian oligarch that Erik Prince attended on his campaign’s behalf, or the meetings his transition team asked George Papadopoulos to set up at the Kremlin, or the Trump tower meeting with Russian agents peddling dirt on Hillary that his son and son-in-law attended.
When will Trump learn that by constantly protesting too much, he only makes himself seem more and more guilty? No wonder no respectable attorney wants to represent him. Luckily for him, there are plenty of lawyers without scruples out there. The problem is that so many of his associates have had to lawyer up that they’re all booked on other jobs and can’t take his case because their existing clients may have to testify against the president.
