Over six years and nine major investigations by Congress, the Justice Department and local prosecutors, as Trump has managed to avoid impeachment and impeachment, it has become clear that serving as one of his lawyers is an extremely dangerous job – and one that can involve significant legal exposure. At times, his lawyers were called to testify as witnesses to potential crimes – or to be assessed as potential conspirators themselves. While the fallout his lawyers faced was unusual when Trump was in the White House, the risks have only intensified since he left office and have become increasingly acute in recent weeks as the former president has come under scrutiny in two separate Department of Justice investigations and was once again forced to find lawyers willing to represent him. Subscribe to The Morning newsletter from The New York Times Last week, a Justice Department filing revealed that Trump’s lawyers had misled federal investigators about whether he had turned over to the Justice Department all classified documents he took from the White House when he left office. That raised questions about whether the attorneys, M. Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, could be prosecuted themselves and could eventually be forced to testify against their client. (Bob recently retained an attorney, according to a person familiar with the situation.) The revelation capped a summer in which a team of lawyers advising Trump as he tried to overturn the 2020 election faced a barrage of backlash across the country from federal investigators, local prosecutors, state bar associations and government accountability groups. One of Trump’s top lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, has been named a target in a state criminal investigation in Georgia. Conservative attorney John Eastman, who uncovered what he privately admitted was an illegal strategy to help Trump overturn the election, said he believed he was targeted in the same probe and declined to answer questions while impaneled before a grand jury. Giuliani and Eastman have also been named as subjects of interest in a series of federal grand jury subpoenas seeking evidence of efforts by Trump allies to create fraudulent voter IDs to help him stay in office. The story continues Two others who worked for Trump in the White House — White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone and his deputy Patrick F. Philbin — have been subpoenaed to appear before a federal court in Washington investigating efforts to sway the 2020 election, including roles that Giuliani and Eastman had played in helping Trump. Cipollone, Philbin and at least nine other lawyers who worked for Trump have testified before the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Earlier this year, Cipollone and Philbin were also interviewed by the FBI as part of its investigation into classified documents. And 17 mostly lesser-known lawyers who represented Trump in battleground states as he tried to overturn the election face ethics complaints, putting them at risk of discipline or disbarment from the bar or courts. Vigorously defending a client—even one known for unscrupulous behavior or accused of a flagrant crime—is part of a lawyer’s basic job description. But lawyers are bound by a code of professional conduct that prohibits them from crossing certain lines, such as knowingly making false allegations, filing frivolous lawsuits or motions, and doing anything in furtherance of a crime. The saying for lawyers who represent clients accused of crimes, said Fritz Scheller, a longtime Florida defense attorney, is that at the end of the day, no matter how bad it may have been for the client, the lawyer still gets out. from the front. courthouse door without personal legal matters. “That bad day for the criminal defense attorney becomes his worst day when he walks out the door of the courthouse that is used for defendants on their way to prison,” Scheller said. Long before he became president, Trump saw lawyers as tools to accomplish whatever unpleasant work he asked. As president, his disregard for institutional rules and demand for unwavering loyalty meant that Trump expected White House lawyers to act in his own self-interest, whether that was within the bounds of the law or in the interest of the country. He is also known for refusing to pay his lawyers for their work. last year, the Republican National Committee agreed to settle up to $1.6 million of Trump’s personal legal bills. Six weeks after taking office, Trump made it clear to his aides what he expected from his lawyers when he fumed at Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, for recusing himself from the investigation into whether Russia meddled in the 2016 election. “I don’t have a lawyer,” Trump told aides in the Oval Office, including White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II. “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Trump was referring to the notorious New York fixer who had represented and mentored Trump in the 1970s when he was an up-and-coming real estate investor. Cohn, who was chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings investigating suspected communists, was disbarred by a New York court in 1986 for misconduct. Trump’s search for such a lawyer set off a vicious cycle: As his legal troubles mounted, he hired more lawyers, who in turn got in trouble for working on his behalf, leading to established lawyers worried about reputations them to refuse to represent him. “There’s no way you can maintain your moral integrity and keep your job,” said Kimberly Welle, a University of Baltimore law professor who closely followed the investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, about the attorneys’ dilemma. of Trump have faced. “There’s no way not to get into a mess.” The personal ramifications of legal work for Trump became painfully apparent to lawyers about four months into his administration, when McGahn and several of his lieutenants — fearing they could be held accountable for Trump’s behavior — retained a high-powered lawyer to Washington to represent them in an investigation into whether the president had obstructed justice. Within two years, McGahn had racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and prosecutors had turned him into a key witness against Trump. At the same time, Trump’s longtime New York lawyer Michael Cohen began a three-year prison sentence for his role in paying off a woman in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign to ensure she did not reveal an affair with Trump. More recently, a long list of lawyers who have represented Trump have found themselves on the side of ethics complaints and disciplinary action. “Ultimately, we want to show all lawyers that the next time Sidney Powell or Rudy Giuliani calls and says, ‘Hey, are you going to sign your name?’ they will say no because they will realize there are professional consequences,” said Michael Teter, director of the 65 Project, which has filed complaints against 40 lawyers involved in lawsuits challenging the 2020 results, including 17 last month. Teter’s team has identified more than 110 lawyers in 26 states who agreed to participate in various conspiracies by Trump and his allies as they sought to overturn the 2020 election. So far, at least 10 of them have been fined or sanctioned. “This is part of a well-funded effort to attack every attorney involved in any of the 2020 election challenges,” Eastman said in a statement responding to an attorney complaint filed against him, adding that the 65 Project’s goal was to “Shame them and make them toxic to their communities and their businesses.” The most serious impact has come for four lawyers who spearheaded the effort. Giuliani’s licenses to practice law in the District of Columbia and New York have been suspended, while Powell has been disciplined in Detroit and faces disciplinary action from the Texas state bar. The two also face separate defamation lawsuits from Dominion, a voting machine company that claims the two acted recklessly by falsely claiming that Dominion machines had helped swing votes from Trump to Biden. Each lawsuit seeks more than $1 billion in damages. Lynn Wood is under investigation by his state bar association in Georgia and has been sanctioned in Michigan. Eastman, who said he could also be a target of the Georgia investigation, may face additional legal risk. Federal agents seized his phone, and a federal judge said in March that he and Trump likely committed felonies while trying to sway the 2020 election. Among the 40 attorneys Teter’s team has singled out for ethics complaints is James Bopp. Kenneth Chesbro; Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Joseph diGenova; Jenna Ellis? Boris Epstein? Cleta Mitchell? and William Olson. The House investigation on Jan. 6 also focused on possible wrongdoing by Trump’s lawyers, particularly their role in the scheme to submit pro-Trump electoral votes in states won by Joe Biden. Giuliani also faced a federal investigation in New York by prosecutors who are said to be looking into his dealings in Ukraine to help Trump dig up dirt on his son Biden. As part of that investigation, federal agents seized cellphones and computers from Giuliani in April during searches of his Madison Avenue apartment and his Park Avenue office in Manhattan. The investigation is unlikely to result in charges. Powell’s nonprofit, Defending the Republic, which raised millions of dollars spreading lies about election fraud,…
