Who is Trump’s Lawyer?

Who is Trump’s Lawyer: Donald Trump has been in steady litigation for the greater part of his career. It’s fairly clear he’s the consummate nightmare client: stiffing lawyers, apparently pressuring them to break legal and ethical rules, and gleefully ignoring their advice. There was that time his lawyers told him to refrain from tweeting about the then ongoing Robert Mueller investigation only to have him do it “before they got to the end of the West Wing driveway,” according to The Washington Post. As the legal fallout from the January 6 insurrection started to put a number of Trump lawyers in legal jeopardy of their own, some of them began joking that MAGA actually stood for “making attorneys get attorneys.” Even Trump told Sean Hannity this March: “I say sometimes to a lawyer, ‘Are you sure you want to represent me? I think you’re making a mistake.'”

And so it was no surprise that Trump has reportedly struggled to assemble a legal team as his court proceedings begin in Florida, with many major Florida attorneys refusing to take him on. After two of Trump’s lawyers quit just a day after the federal indictment came down, following in the footsteps of Timothy Parlatore, who resigned in May, one top federal criminal defense attorney in the Southern District of Florida told The Messenger that “the problem is none of us want to work for the guy.”

While neither has any experience in national security cases, Trump appeared on Tuesday with two slightly more buttoned-up figures—Chris Kise, a former Florida solicitor general, and Todd Blanche, a former federal prosecutor with white-collar defense experience. Last week, Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair wrote, Trump was still “looking for a vicious lawyer in the mold of his mentor Roy Cohn.”

As Trump’s current legal woes escalate, we’ve assembled a rogues’ gallery of some of the lawyers who hopped on and off Trump’s legal carousel in the over three years since his first impeachment trial, and who ended up in court over their legal work for the now federally indicted former president:

Christina Bobb

After a disastrous 2014 run for Congress in California, Bobb joined the Donald Trump administration early on, first as a law clerk in the White House Office for National Drug Control Policy, then for stints at the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection. She was reportedly considered to be “mega MAGA” by other DHS officials, who (foreshadowing!) worried whether she could be trusted with classified information. Bobb pivoted in June 2020, becoming an on-air anchor for far-right One America News Network, where she obsequiously covered the White House and reliably churned out election lies. In March 2022 she signed a sworn statement attesting that, to the best of her knowledge, Trump’s legal team had conducted a “diligent search” of his Mar-a-Lago compound and had returned classified documents.

John Eastman

A former law professor and once high-ranking member of the archconservative Federalist Society, Eastman provided the “brains”—such as they were—for Trump’s crackpot plan to pressure Mike Pence to block the election-certification process, a scheme Eastman privately admitted was unlawful. On January 6, Eastman spoke next to Giuliani at the rally at the Ellipse, and afterward reportedly sought a pardon, emailing Giuliani, “I’ve decided I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.”

 Cleta Mitchell

She is one of just a few former Trump election lawyers who can be said to have landed on her feet, if by landed on her feet you mean continuing her unrelenting assault on voting rights. After news broke that she had been on Trump’s infamous vote-finding call with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, she resigned from her law firm, but quickly jumped on the right-wing gravy train and blamed “leftist groups via social media” for her ouster.

Bruce Castor

Castor, a Pennsylvania lawyer whose previous claim to fame was his refusal to prosecute Bill Cosby in 2005 after Andrea Constand accused him of sexual assault, was tapped as one of Trump’s lead defense lawyers during his second impeachment trial. In a widely ridiculed performance that reportedly left Trump “borderline screaming,” Castor gave a meandering, incoherent opening speech that at one point mistakenly referred to himself as the “lead prosecutor.” Even Alan Dershowitz, who represented Trump during his first impeachment trial, confessed to having “no idea what [Castor’s] doing.”

Recently, Bruce Castor, who defended Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, was helping Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani was helped by Bruce Castor, who defended Donald Trump during his second impeachment attempt.

Sidney Powell

For a brief, terrifying moment, Powell’s syrupy, southern drawl and leopard-print cardigan were a near-constant presence on Fox News and in election press conferences, even after Trump booted her just days after a Trump lawyer named her a member of his legal team’s “elite strike force.” In one infamous interview, Powell claimed she was going to “release the Kraken”—a QAnon catchphrase later repeated by Ginni Thomas in texts to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows—though her evidence of election subversion could charitably be described as far-fetched.

Jenna Ellis

She became a senior legal adviser to Trump’s 2020 campaign after her Fox News hits caught his attention. The Fox News hits of Jenna Ellis caught Trump’s attention, and she became a senior legal adviser for the 2020 campaign.  JEFF KOWALSKY/GETTY IMAGES.

Bess Levin

In the Blue Room of the White House, Cleta Mitchell stands to the left of Donald Trump. In 2021, Mitchell founded the “Election Integrity Network” under the umbrella of the Conservative Partnership Institute. In a recent private talk with big Republican donors, Mitchell advocated for pushing to make voting more difficult for college students in major swing states.

In many ways, Ellis is the quintessential Trumpian embellisher. Despite limited legal experience working as a local prosecutor in rural Colorado, Ellis quickly wormed her way into the national media spotlight, casting herself as a “constitutional law attorney” in appearances on Fox News. Her Fox hits caught Trump’s eye, and she became a “senior legal adviser to the Trump 2020 campaign and to the president” in 2019. In mid-November 2020 Ellis bragged that she was part of “an elite strike-force team” that included Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and had been assembled to challenge the election results.

Rudy Giuliani, of course

Remember Four Seasons Total Landscaping? Those mysterious oleaginous excretions? That tawdry Borat scene? Rudy Giuliani was beclowned over and over in public as he bent over backward to challenge the results of the 2020 election. Trump cut most ties with Giuliani soon after January 6, and allegedly refused his requests to pay a $20,000-a-day salary. “Lay down with dogs. Wake up with fleas and without $20,000 a day,” a onetime Giuliani press secretary said, chiding his former boss. Now, Giuliani is engulfed in legal trouble of his own. His law license was suspended in New York and Washington, DC, and he’s been named as a target in Fani Willis’s Georgia investigation. And in May, a former employee filed a civil suit accusing Giuliani of rape, battery, sexual assault, wage theft, and more.

Because there are too many Trump’s attorneys to count, we chose to limit our list, but it would almost be cruel not to mention Michael Cohen, the former Trump lawyer, now disbarred, for campaign finance charges, lying to Congress, and other crimes he committed during his time working for the former president. He went to jail (and served home confinement) for the crimes he committed.