(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
WANTED: Lawyer barred in the Southern District of Florida. Must have high tolerance for humiliation. Retention of license to practice law not guaranteed.
Last week, two more lawyers from Trumpland headed for the hills, as Jim Trusty and John Rowley joined Tim Parlatore in tucking and rolling themselves off the Trump Train. While Parlatore spent the past two weeks whining to CNN that’s Trump’s fixer Boris Epshteyn made it impossible to represent him, Trusty and Rowley put out a statement saying “now that this case has been filed in Miami, this is a logical moment for us to step aside and let others carry these cases to completion.”
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Which makes sense, if you pretend that lawyers routinely quit when their clients actually get indicted. You’ll also need to ignore the fact that there’s still a grand jury in DC — where Trusty and Rowley are admitted — investigating Trump’s involvement in the January 6 Capitol Riot.
In any event, the announcement that Trump has been indicted in Miami with an initial appearance scheduled for Tuesday at 3pm set off a scramble in Trumpland to find local counsel. Apparently, when you’re the world’s worst client, it’s not so easy to find a lawyer barred in the Southern District of Florida to represent you.
And indeed, the court clerk has gently nudged Trump to name local counsel in advance of tomorrow’s hearing, writing a letter to the out-of-state attorneys who have handled surrender negotiations thus far that their pro hac vice applications must “designate a member of the Bar of this Court who is authorized to file through the Court’s electronic filing system, to act as local counsel with whom the Court and opposing counsel may readily communicate regarding the conduct of the case.”
White collar defense lawyer Todd Blanche, who resigned as a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft to represent Trump in the criminal case brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, will take the lead in the Florida case as well. But Blanche, a former prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, is not admitted in Florida.
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CNN reports:
Trump’s team spoke with a number of lawyers over the weekend, but it’s unclear as of now who the former president will formally hire to represent him in Florida, sources close to the process tell CNN.
Trump’s team has been reaching out to Florida-based attorneys and firms to gauge their interest in joining them, sources tell CNN. Some Florida lawyers also are reaching out to the Trump team to express interest.
And The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, tweeted earlier today that Trump will make do with former Florida Solicitor General Chris Kise if he can’t persuade anyone to take the case before then.
As of now, per ppl familiar, Trump expected to do his arraignment with Todd Blanche and Chris Kise — who is barred in Southern District of Florida — but if he retains new counsel today, they could also appear. For the arraignment, Trump will enter thru sally port, not main door.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 12, 2023
Like Blanche, Kise was lured away from Biglaw with a pile of cash from one of Trump’s PACs. But after forking over $3 million to prise him out of Foley & Lardner, Trump almost immediately shunted Kise up to New York to play second chair to Alina Habba on the New York Attorney General’s civil suit — where he found himself in Justice Arthur Engoron’s crosshairs from one too many frivolous motions filed by his co-counsel.
Luckily, there are also a couple of Florida practitioners in Trump’s rotating stable of attorneys.
The attorney of record for the appeal of the withering smackdown by US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks in the Clinton RICO LOLsuit is Jared Roberts, an associate at the firm run by Trumpland regular Jesse Binnall. Roberts has been a member of the Florida bar since May of 2022 and appears to practice out of Northern Virginia, though, so perhaps he’s sub-ideal.
Similarly there’s Trump’s old boarding school roommate Peter Ticktin, who acted as local counsel in that suit. But he and Habba managed to get themselves and Trump a million dollars of sanctions, so perhaps he’s in foul odor with his former buddy at this point.
And Trump’s lawyer Lindsey Halligan appears to be admitted to the Southern District of Florida. But her prior experience appears to have been as an insurance lawyer in landlord-tenant disputes, and her colleagues complain that her (admittedly telegenic) presence “waters down the honor to represent a president.”
So the hunt is on for local counsel willing to put their name on whatever gobbledygook filings are about to come out of Trumpworld — although with Judge Aileen Cannon assigned to the case, virtually any insanity should do it.
Godspeed, counselors. And may the odds be ever in your favor.
Trump’s legal team searches for lawyers to represent him in Florida [CNN]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.