Donald Trump is currently footing the bill for the legal representation of one of his co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case — and that co-defendant might not actually be aware of legal conflicts of interest, reported The Guardian's Hugo Lowell on Thursday.
Carlos De Oliveira, the Mar-a-Lago property manager indicted in connection with the special counsel’s probe of Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents along with the former president and his body man Walt Nauta, requested to keep attorney John Irving during a federal court hearing, but didn't appear to understand the implications of this, Lowell wrote on X.
"De Oliveira was asked if he understood Irving’s potential conflicts arising from his prior representation of three people the Special Counsel could call as trial witnesses, and he said he would move forward with Irving anyway," said Lowell. "BUT De Oliveira, who did not complete high school and told the judge he could read English better than he could write, struggled to articulate the exact nature of the potential conflicts in his own words though he affirmed repeatedly when the judge walked him thru questions."
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Trump's PAC has been funding a number of lawyers for various witnesses and co-defendants in several different investigations. But oftentimes, these lawyers have been accused of acting against their clients' interests to shield Trump.
Last year, CNN reported that Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House staffer who told the House January 6 Select Committee about Trump's activities on the day of the Capitol attack, was advised by a Trump PAC-paid lawyer, Stefan Passantino, to withhold information from the committee and falsely say she couldn't remember it. Passantino, who took a leave of absence from his firm following the allegations, has denied acting improperly and filed a defamation suit against legal commentator and former Mueller investigation prosecutor Andrew Weissman for saying that he "coached" Hutchinson to lie.
More recently, Yuscil Taveras, the IT manager at Mar-a-Lago, abandoned his Trump PAC-paid attorney, Stanley Woodward, after allegedly being given advice that could lead to his prosecution, instead seeking counsel from a federal public defender and reaching a cooperation agreement with special counsel Jack Smith that, for now, has kept him from being indicted. Woodward has accused Smith of "improper" tactics to secure this agreement.
