Trump's lawyers find themselves in unfamiliar roles: Defendants and witnesses

As Monday’s criminal indictments in Georgia made clear, lawyers who become entangled with Donald Trump and his bogus claims that election fraud cost him the 2020 election can often find themselves under legal scrutiny.

Among the attorneys charged in the 41-count indictment are Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Ray Smith, Kenneth Chesebro and Robert Cheeley. All of them are accused of having violated Georgia’s RICO Act for their part in the larger crime of overturning the fairly decided election results. Read the full indictment here.

Of course, the potential legal jeopardy faced by lawyers who either represent or advise Trump is nothing new. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to criminal tax evasion, campaign finance violations and other crimes committed while working for Trump. He is a key witness in the New York hush money case brought against the former president by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

In April, Trump attorney Boris Epshteyn testified before the grand jury that voted to indict the former president in the Jan. 6, 2021, election interference case. Trump is the sole defendant named so far in that matter, but lawyers who worked for him to overturn the election were also referenced as alleged co-conspirators in the plot. They could still face charges.

According to former Trump lawyer Timothy Parlatore — who resigned in May as a member of the legal team defending the former president in the classified documents and Jan. 6 cases — Epshteyn was a particularly difficult person to work with. Like Epshteyn, Parlatore was himself called to testify before a federal grand jury, though that case was about Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Parlatore wasn’t the first Trump lawyer to abandon ship. Attorneys James Trusty and John Rowley were put in charge of the documents and Jan. 6 cases following Parlatore’s departure. After Trump was indicted in June by special counsel Jack Smith in the documents case, both men tendered their resignations, saying in a statement it was “a logical moment for us to step aside and let others carry the cases through to completion."

In March, a federal judge ruled that former Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran’s claims of attorney-client privilege were not sufficient to prevent him from testifying before the grand jury in the classified documents investigation. He testified before the grand jury in April and resigned from his role as one of Trump’s attorneys in May.

According to Trump lawyer Christina Bobb, Corcoran asked her to sign a statement to the Justice Department attesting that the former president’s legal team had conducted a “diligent search” of Mar-a-Lago, turned up only a few files and promptly returned them. Bobb drafted her own line to accompany the statement that said it was true “to the best of my knowledge.”

When the FBI searched Trump’s Florida home, however, they discovered more than 100 additional documents, some of them highly classified.

Bobb, like so many members of Trump’s legal team, was also interviewed by lawyers from the Justice Department.

Earlier this year, the New York Times profiled Trump’s quest to find “another Roy Cohn” to represent him in legal battles. Cohn represented Trump as both a loyal political fixer and attorney in the 1970s and 1980s; the hyperaggressive attorney was himself indicted on witness tampering and perjury charges but was later acquitted.

He “earned a reputation for practicing with threats, scorched-earth attacks and media manipulation,” the Times noted.

“Mr. Trump’s continual efforts to identify and recruit the newest Roy Cohn have always been unusual and impulsive, according to interviews with a half dozen people who have represented or been involved in Mr. Trump’s legal travails over the past seven years.”