Donald Trump’s attorney now potentially in danger of getting kicked off Manhattan case
Donald Trump famously loves hiring attorneys after seeing them make passionate defenses of him on television, without bothering to look into their backgrounds or suitability first. This might work in politics, or when you have the office of the presidency shielding you from indictment. But it’s a bad idea when you’re a defendant in the criminal justice system.
Trump currently has defense attorney Joe Tacopina representing him in the Manhattan criminal case. But it now turns out Tacopina and Stormy Daniels communicated in 2018 about the possibility of him representing her in this same scandal. Now those communications are reportedly in the hands of the Manhattan District Attorney.
This is a big deal because Daniels is now a potential trial witness in the case, as evidenced by the DA’s meeting with her last week. If Daniels gave Tacopina any confidential information about the case back in 2018, then it would be a conflict of interest for Tacopina to represent Trump in the same case now.
Tacopina says he didn’t receive any confidential information about Daniels. But that’ll be up to the DA to determine. If he sees grounds for a conflict of interest, he can ask the judge in the case to bar Tacopina from representing Trump in this matter. Trump would then be in the familiar position of needing to find yet another new attorney. Given that he’s about to be criminally indicted, this would be particularly bad timing for him.
