Arrested Development birthed an always relevant meme when Tobias and Lindsay agreed to try an open marriage. After Lindsay asked if an open marriage ever works to solve marital difficulties, Tobias — always the psychoanalyst manqué (an “Analrapist” as he described his brand of Analyst/Therapist) — explains that it’s a terrible idea that “never, ever works,” before adding, brightly, “but it might work for us.”
A whole lot of Trump’s personal lawyers embraced the Tobias logic, with Susan Necheles taking the hardest hit.
According to a new FEC filing first reported by NOTUS, Donald Trump’s Save America PAC — the vehicle he uses to pay legal bills — is nearly $500,000 in the red, while owing roughly $1.6 million to a roster of 12 different law firms.
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Stiffing lawyers is a time-honored tradition in the Trump orbit. He famously pulled the rug out from Rudy Giuliani after Rudy devoted his entire post-mayoral career, law license, and remaining credibility to peddling the Big Lie. Decades of vendors, contractors, and attorneys could have warned Rudy. Trump has been slapped with hundreds of lawsuits, liens, and other legal interventions for non-payment. Invoicing Donald Trump is a lot like betting on the Washington Generals.
When Susan Necheles — a serious criminal defense lawyer with a long and respectable career — decided to join the Trump team to cross-examine Stormy Daniels, the veteran attorney apparently looked at all that history and cheerily muttered: But it might work for us!
NechelesLaw LLP, is owed more than $660,000.
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But while she’s getting stiffed the worst, she’s at least not alone. Wharton Law PLLC, another firm headed by a lawyer who represented Trump in the same trial, is due $112K. Brito PLLC, representing Trump in defamation suits against a variety of media outlets as well as the $5 billion lawsuit against Jamie Dimon for caring about his bank over Trump, is owed $44K. The list goes on. It even drags in Biglaw:
About $400,000 is owed to Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. Trump nominated one of its lawyers last week to a lifelong U.S. appeals court judge position based in New York. Trump also nominated a lawyer from James Otis Law Group LLC in February to a federal judicial post. His PAC owes that firm, located in St. Louis, about $1,700.
And that’s the thing… Trump is paying his lawyers, just not with money.
Todd Blanche, who sat next to Necheles at the hush money trial, is the Acting Attorney General. Emil Bove is on the Third Circuit. This past Friday, Trump nominated Sullivan & Cromwell partner Matthew Schwartz — who worked on Trump’s criminal appeal — to the Second Circuit. Justin Smith, another personal lawyer, picked up an Eighth Circuit nomination earlier this year. Alina Habba’s firm is on the list as well.
Paying in kind is much cheaper than paying in money. Indeed, it costs Trump nothing at all. The rule of law pays the price.
And this is where Necheles’s miscalculation comes into focus. She’s shown zero public interest in serving the administration. She just… did the work for the love of the billable hour. In Trumpland, that’s a critical mistake.
Save America has done this before, burning through donor money on lawyers faster than it could raise it. And the lawyers doing their jobs are left holding the bag.
Perhaps, someday, lawyers will learn that working for Trump only pays in patronage assignments to jobs they’re questionably qualified to hold. Today is apparently not that day. For now, unless lawyers want a cushy job, they should stop somehow deluding themselves into thinking these gigs are anything but pro bono.
Or, hey, maybe — just this one time — it might work for them. Good luck!