A former U.S. attorney said she believes Donald Trump is too toxic for the country's top lawyers to go anywhere near him.
Trump faces a raft of legal problems, including 91 criminal charges across four indictments brought in Florida, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and New York. He denies all of the charges and says they are politically motivated. This week, he has a civil defamation case in New York to deal with.
Joyce Vance wrote in a Substack post that she believes Trump's lawyer, Alina Habba, could be "in over her head." Habba is representing Trump in the civil case brought by former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll.
Vance said Habba showed a "lack of courtroom experience" during the early days of the trial, which began earlier this week.
She added: "He is so toxic that most of the good lawyers won't touch him."
Trump has publicly praised his attorney, calling her a "warrior" and a "great lawyer."
In December last year, Trump told the New York Young Republicans Gala: "She has done an incredible job and has tremendous courage."
But Vance appeared to disagree, citing some of this week's events in court.
Habba told Judge Lewis Kaplan she doesn't like "to be spoken to in that way" during a tense exchange in which the judge told her to sit down.
Vance called this moment "embarrassing," adding: "As a lawyer, you don't win an argument in court with a judge about how he should run his courtroom. He holds all the cards. You say, 'Thank you, your honor.' You move on."
Newsweek has approached Habba via an email to her law firm, along with a Trump spokesperson, for comment.
Trump's lawyer was arguing that the trial should be postponed so he could attend his mother-in-law's funeral, but Kaplan denied the motion, pointing out that Trump was under no obligation to be in court.
Kaplan also denied a number of pre-trial requests, leading Habba to say: "I don't know how to try this case, Your Honor."
The judge said: "I have heard you, I have considered what you have to say and I have ruled... In my courtroom, when the ruling is made that is the end, not the beginning of the argument."
The New York civil trial is to determine the damages owed to Carroll by Trump after he was found by a jury last year to have defamed and sexually assaulted her.
Kaplan ruled Trump could not discuss DNA; funding for litigation; Carroll's previous romantic relationships and sexual experiences; Carroll's choice of counsel and "suggesting or implying" that Trump did not sexually abuse her.
Habba was cut off when she began: "President Trump defended himself," before Kaplan stopped her.
According to Kaplan's ruling, Trump can't say he did not make statements in 2019 "with actual malice," or that Carroll lied about being sexually assaulted.
Trump says he never "met, saw, or touched" Carroll. He says he did not sexually assault her at a Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s in New York.
The Republican presidential candidate has had a high turnover of lawyers at key points during his legal history, but it isn't clear why.
In August, Trump replaced defense lawyer Drew Findling hours before he was arraigned in a separate criminal case in Georgia.
This week, three lawyers from the firm Tacopina, Seigel & DeOreo dropped out before Trump's defamation case. Tacopina previously declined to comment.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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