'Frickin' idiot' attorney Tacopina facing rebellion from Trump advisers
Donald Trump's lawyers really don't like his new television lawyer, Joe Tacopina, Rolling Stoneis reporting, citing "a source familiar with the matter and another person close to Trump."
Describing Tacopina as “dumb” and a “loudmouth," Trump lawyers warn the former president that he should be careful.
“He pisses off others with his antics, but he’s a blunt object that Donald Trump wants, apparently,” says one of the sources.
Another source called Tacopina “such a frickin’ idiot.”
In the past week, Tacopina has spent days using his blusterous style to defend Trump on CNN and MSNBC. The problem, however, is that his comments have also provided no actual legal defense for Trump. As former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman explained, his comments have been "a total sideshow." They're designed to draw attention to something else entirely.
Tacopina falsely claimed that Trump never lied about his affair, (despite the fact) that (his affair) is fairly well-known. Speaking to MSNBC host Ari Melber, Tacopina also began claiming that Trump's own lawyer had gone rogue. It's a problem that is quickly shot down by the recordings that Cohen gave to the grand jury.
"That doesn't sound like someone who has a lawyer [Michael Cohen] who's gone rogue, it sounds like someone using this lawyer to send the money to Daniels and the problem potentially for your client in New York is whether this was misclassified, a.k.a. illegally written down as something it wasn't," said Melber.
"What would be illegal about it?" asked Tacopina.
"Well, I could show you," Melber said, picking up the piece of paper with information on it. He began reading the Cohen court documents citing Trump as "Individual -1."
Rolling Stone explained that the appearances of Tacopina haven't been to Trump's benefit.
"During a recent appearance on Ari Melber’s The Beat, for example, Tacopina tried to grab a piece of paper held by the MSNBC host during the heated exchange. Tacopina also defended Trump’s denial of paying off porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged affair, albeit in a somewhat unique way: Insisting that the denial wasn’t a lie as it wasn’t made under oath," said the report.
"A lie to me is something material, under oath, in a proceeding,” Tacopina said. He tried to claim that it wasn't really a lie if it was on television or at a rally or anywhere else that wasn't under oath. “It’s not a lie because it was a confidential settlement. So, if he acknowledged that he would be violating the confidential settlement.”
Then there's the matter of what Tacopina said before working for Trump. Trump's allies have told him that he should be cautious about Tacopina's loyalty. When he wasn't working for the former president, he claimed that Trump could have claimed the hush money payments as an in-kind donation, a violation of the campaign finance laws. When he began working for Trump, he swore that he hadn't changed his mind. Now he says it was all just academic or hypothetical.
“It was a hypothetical question asked by a T.V. host, and I answered by twice qualifying my answer with ‘if those are, in fact, the facts!!’” Tacopina told Rolling Stone.
When asked about the criticisms, Tacopina attacked them for being anonymous and said they're really just jealous.
“When anonymous sources make comments criticizing others it reveals jealousy and cowardice. Anyone who takes a look at my track record of trial success and the results I have achieved for my clients couldn’t seriously criticize my work or my intelligence,” he told Rolling Stone in a statement.
“My results are documented and if you truly wanted to do an honest and thorough story you would speak to the clients I served over the years instead of printing false allegations from ‘unnamed sources’ who are jealous that they haven’t been chosen in this case or the other many high profile cases I have had. The story loses journalistic value and calls into question the integrity of the story and the credibility of the so-called anonymous sources,” he also said.
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