Well, now we know why Trump spent Sunday morning tweeting about lawyers and about how, contrary to media reports, “many law firms” want to work with him on the Russia case.
I mean, one reason he was tweeting about that was because John Dowd bailed on him this week and also because according to Politico, Don McGahn wants out as well.
You can hardly blame them. Trump reportedly won’t listen to Dowd when it comes to Mueller and as for McGahn, he threatened to quit last year when Trump tried to have Mueller fired. Additionally, ol’ Don has found himself entangled in the special counsel probe himself for all manner of reasons, not the least of which was his effort to prevent Jeff Sessions from recusing himself and playing a role in the firing of James Comey.
And so, Trump feels like he needs to reassure the public that he won’t end up having to represent himself or maybe hire Saul Goodman when Mueller finally indicts him.
Well the other thing Trump said this morning in the same tweet was that although “fame & fortune will NEVER be turned down by a lawyer,” some “are conflicted.”
As the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman immediately noted:
This is a prelude to the lawyers who got announced last week, Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, being conflicted out because she represents other witnesses, including Corallo. https://t.co/8JQeBFGMzK
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 25, 2018
Sure enough, diGenova will not in fact be joining Trump’s team. To wit, from the Times:
President Trump has decided not to hire two lawyers who were announced last week as new additions to his legal team, leaving him with a shrinking stable of lawyers as the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, enters an intense phase.
“The president is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining the president’s special counsel legal team,” Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said in a statement on Sunday morning. “However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters. The president looks forward to working with them.”
[…]
According to two people told of details about the meeting, the president did not believe he had personal chemistry with Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing.
Beyond that, Ms. Toensing is representing Mark Corallo, who was the spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team in 2017 before they parted ways.
Mr. Corallo has told investigators that he was concerned that a close aide to Mr. Trump, Hope Hicks, may have been planning to obstruct justice during the drafting of a statement about a meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr. during the campaign.
Whatever the reasons, this is just further evidence that Trump’s legal team is in turmoil and you’ll also note that diGenova was supposed to be someone who was willing to go out on a limb and support Trump’s deep state conspiracy theories. Now that’s out the window.
So who knows what’s next. And indeed, as we wrote on Saturday, that’s this whole administration in a nutshell: “who knows.”
Can't be stressed enough – he's a sitting president with personal wealth and few if any white shoe firms want to work for him. https://t.co/90mgtMTqfL
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 25, 2018
I can just see Trump on the phone looking to see if he can hire Matlock.
It’s truly beyond comprehension that “conflicts” were the real reason. I’m not certain they were ever hired. Trump may have hired them the same way he hired Bolton: Bolton found out he was hired during an episode of “Bolton Gone Wild,” on Fox.
Perhaps the world found out that Crazy Joe and Victor Victoria were hired while they were conducting a séance with H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman in preparation for their next mile high conspiracy show, only to later deliver the bad news to Destructo that they had a conflict. No lawyer with a 1/4 of pea brain under these circumstances would have not seen the Corallo conflict in an atomic second. And I’ll be the first to admit that between Crazy and Victor there at least 1/4 of a pea brain.