Lawyer says he quit Trump's legal team over clashes with one of his advisors
ERIC TUCKERMay 20, 2023
A lawyer who quit Donald Trump’s legal team
CHANGE TO LAST FOR PRINT
this
past
week
said Saturday that he decided to leave due attributed his decision Saturday
to strategy disagreements with a close advis
o
r to the former president.
Timothy Parlatore, who had been a key lawyer for Trump in the Justice Department’s special counsel investigation into the potential mishandling of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate, told CNN in an interview on Saturday that there were certain individuals that made defending the president much harder than it needed to be.
He singled out Boris Epshteyn
cq
, another lawyer and top Trump advis
o
r in multiple criminal investigations,
accusing him
of doing everything he could to try to block us
,
to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the president.
Parlatore disclosed Wednesday that he was resigning from the Trump legal team, a move that comes as the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith shows signs of winding down and nearing a decision on whether or not to bring charges against the former president.
The lawyer’s comments Saturday provided additional context for the decision.
In a statement responding to Parlatore’s comments, a Trump spokesman said: Mr. Parlatore is no longer a member of the legal team. His statements regarding current members of the legal team are unfounded and categorically false.
In his interview, Parlatore said Epshteyn had served as a filter,
in
preventing the legal team from getting information about the investigation to or from Trump.
He also said
that
Epshteyn had resisted the idea of the legal team organizing
months ago
a search of Trump’s property in Bedminster,
N.J.
,
months ago
for potential additional classified documents, and that he had impeded a defense strategy aimed at helping educate
[Atty. Gen.]
Merrick Garland as to how best to handle this matter.
Parlatore was one of the authors of a letter last month to the chairman of the House
I
ntelligence
C
ommittee
that laid
out a series of potential defenses in the investigation.
Its difficult enough fighting against
[the Justice Department] DOJ
, and in this case a special counsel
. B
ut when you also have people within the tent that are also trying to undermine you, block you,
[they]and
really make it so that I cant do what I know that I need to do as a lawyer, Parlatore said.
And
When I am getting into fights like that, thats detracting from what is necessary to defend the client and ultimately was not in the client’s best interest,” he added. “So I made the decision to withdraw.”
