With Donald Trump facing no less than four criminal investigations, as well as civil suits headed to court, his ever-changing team of lawyers has no leader and no coherent legal strategy, according to the Wall Street Journal.
As the Journal's Rebecca Ballhaus, Alex Leary and Corinne Ramey are reporting, "the former president is employing his familiar scattershot tactics to meet the start of a potentially more precarious legal chapter," and that has former aides and legal advisers concerned.
Former Trump lawyer Ty Cobb summed up the president's current legal team travails, explaining, "He plays his own captain, and legally that is suicidal. His strategy, to the extent there is one, appears totally reactive.”
According to the report, the former president has encouraged "infighting" among his lawyers, many of whom don't know what the others are doing because of a lack of coordination of efforts when they aren't questioning each other's tactics.
"To counter those probes, Mr. Trump is relying on a scattered team of lawyers and advisers with little sign of a coordinated strategy beyond attacking investigators, seeking to delay proceedings and casting himself as the victim of a witch hunt," the report states before adding, "Mr. Trump has long encouraged infighting among his attorneys by playing them against each other, at times calling advisers to ask what they think of his legal team’s performance and calling other lawyers to ask them to join or replace members of his team."
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According to Cobb, part of the problem is turnover and another part is Trump's attorneys becoming enmeshed in his legal problems, putting their careers at stake.
“Nobody considering assisting the former president at this stage of the game can be unmindful of the extraordinary speed with which Trump turns lawyers into witnesses,” he admitted.
The report notes that Trump's tactics of attack and delay have come back to haunt him, with the FBI having to show up with a warrant at Mar-a-Lago after Trump foot dragging warranting its own investigation by special counsel Jack Smith.
"The actions of Mr. Trump’s attorneys have also been a central part of the Justice Department’s documents probe. One of them, Christina Bobb, told federal investigators that another lawyer, Mr. Corcoran, assured her that he conducted a thorough search of Mar-a-Lago before he asked her in June to certify that all records requested by a subpoena had been returned. The certification by Ms. Bobb was undermined two months later when the FBI searched the Florida compound and retrieved hundreds of sensitive and classified documents."
"Prosecutors have asked about the role of Mr. [Boris] Epshteyn in the Mar-a-Lago investigation, with questions suggesting an interest in whether he sought to influence witness testimony, according to people familiar with the investigation. Mr. Epshteyn and his lawyer have declined to comment on prosecutors’ interest," the report added.
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