TEAM EXODUS

Trump Left Abandoned by His Elite Legal Team

The president’s once-elite legal team has shrunk to one partner after four others left.

President Donald Trump’s once-star-studded legal team has dwindled to a lone lawyer as he barrels toward three appeals.

According to Politico, four of the five members of Trump’s legal team have left Sullivan & Cromwell, the firm the president first tapped to represent him in an attempt to appeal and overturn his hush money conviction in January last year.

The five partners on Trump’s legal team had all clerked for Supreme Court justices, making it unusually elite and, as The New York Times described it last year, a sign that “legal power players have warmed to the president.”

Yet four of the partners have since left for other firms or been given posts in the Trump administration or judiciary, according to Politico.

By April, only Sullivan & Cromwell co-chair Robert Giuffra Jr. remained, representing Trump in his hush money criminal appeal, his E. Jean Carroll defamation case appeal, and his bid to overturn New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud judgment.

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In July, Giuffra and a junior lawyer were the only signatories on Trump’s petition asking the Supreme Court to overturn Carroll’s $83.3 million defamation judgment, stemming from her allegations that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and later defamed her.

Trump had already suffered a legal blow in the other of Carroll’s two civil lawsuits, when the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal, leaving intact the $5 million award from the 2023 trial.

Politico noted that, given Giuffra’s role, it would be unusual for him to handle all three appeals at once. A person familiar with the situation said additional partners are expected to join Trump’s team in the coming weeks.

Still, the turnaround looks tight.

Trump’s lawyers are due to file their brief in the New York civil fraud case on Aug. 26. The case has largely gone his way so far, after an appeals court overturned the roughly $500 million judgment brought by James over claims that Trump inflated his assets and misrepresented his net worth to secure better loan terms.

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His lawyers are nevertheless asking the New York Court of Appeals to overturn the underlying fraud finding entirely.

The team will then have to file another brief in October seeking to overturn Trump’s May 2024 conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign.

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The gaps on Trump’s legal team are partly of his own making. Trump tapped Jamie McDonald as Manhattan U.S. attorney, nominated Matthew Schwartz to a lifetime seat on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, while the other two partners left to join a rival firm.

Last month, people familiar with the matter told Politico that Giuffra encouraged the firm to work with Trump and was even considered by the president for attorney general, though Trump ultimately chose his former criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, for the job.

Though Trump has rewarded some partners at one of the world’s most prestigious law firms with positions in his administration and the judiciary, others have chosen to leave over the firm’s association with him.

The Daily Beast has reached out to Sullivan & Cromwell and the White House for comment.

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