Mary Trump noted that Monday wasn’t all good news for her uncle Donald Trump.
In her Substack newsletter, she pointed out that one of the former president’s attorneys, Joe Tacopina, had filed notices that day seeking the withdrawal of his law firm from representing Donald Trump. Tacopina withdrew from two cases in New York: a criminal trial over alleged falsification of business records, and an appeal of the verdict in a civil lawsuit brought by writer E Jean Carroll. Donald Trump has denied wrongdoing in both cases.
Tacopina told ABC News that he had withdrawn “on all matters” but did not comment on his reasons.
“On what everyone knew was supposed to be a day of victory for Donald in Iowa, this loss will still be burning in his mind,” Mary Trump wrote in the newsletter, The Good in Us.
Donald Trump swept the Iowa caucuses Monday with a commanding victory, winning 98 of 99 counties and cementing his front-runner status in the race for the GOP’s presidential nomination.
“It’s not unusual for Donald to go through lawyers at an alarming rate, but Tacopina’s high profile status shows just how dysfunctional Donald’s ‘defense’ really is,” wrote Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, author and outspoken critic of her uncle.
Tacopina’s withdrawal was announced ahead of Tuesday morning’s jury selection in a second defamation trial tied to Carroll’s allegations that Donald Trump raped her in the 1990s. A jury found him liable for defaming and sexually abusing Carroll last year, though it didn’t find that Trump had raped her.
The former president recently told The New York Times that he wished to testify in the second trial and that Tacopina, who represented him in the first, had advised him not to last time.
Mary Trump suggested that her uncle’s decision to speak in court last week at the end of a separate civil fraud trial, in which Trump has also denied wrongdoing, might’ve played a role in Tacopina’s departure.
“After Donald’s disastrous closing argument in his New York fraud trial, it’s no wonder that Tacopina wanted to distance himself from Donald’s penchant for self-destruction behavior,” she wrote.
“Losing just one key lawyer could have a devastating impact on a case, but not only is Tacopina dumping Donald as a client — his entire firm is leaving,” she added, calling such a move a “major set back for any defense”.
In his business records case, Donald Trump faces 34 felony charges from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in connection to a hush money payment made to porn actor Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
He traveled to New York after the caucuses to attend the Carroll trial on Tuesday.
In a statement to Reuters about Tacopina’s departure, a spokesperson for the former president said that he “has the most experienced, qualified, disciplined, and overall strongest legal team ever assembled”.