Earnie Grafton/Reuters and Andrew Harnik/AP
- Timothy Parlatore represented Trump in the DOJ's investigations into the former president.
- He resigned from Trump's team of attorneys on Tuesday.
- In a CNN interview, Parlatore said there was conflict within Trump's own legal team.
A former lawyer who represented Donald Trump throughout the Justice Department's probe of the former president's handling of classified documents and efforts to interfere with the 2020 election results said that infighting within Trump's legal team was why he made his exit earlier this week.
Timothy Parlatore was one of Trump's lawyers throughout the DOJ probes, which are being overseen by special counsel Jack Smith, who will soon decide whether to charge Trump in the two cases. The attorney officially resigned on Tuesday with little explanation.
In an interview with CNN's Paula Reid that aired Saturday, Parlatore said that the reason for his departure "had nothing to do with the case itself or the client."
"The real reason is because there are certain individuals that made defending the president much harder than it needed to be," Paraltore said.
Parlatore then singled out one of Trump's lawyers, Boris Epshteyn, who joined the former president's 2016 campaign as an aide and has remained in Trump's orbit ever since.
"In particular, there's one individual who works for him, Boris Ephsteyn, who had really done everything he could to try to block us — to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the president," he said.
In one case, Paraltore claimed Epshteyn "attempted to interfere" with the team's efforts to conduct more searches of Trump's properties following the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents.
"It's difficult enough fighting against DOJ and, in this case, special counsel," Parlatore added. "But when you also have people within the tent that are also trying to undermine you, block you, and really make it so that I can't do what I know that I need to do as a lawyer, and when I am getting into fights like that, that's detracting from what is necessary to defend the client and ultimately not in the clients best interest, so I made the ultimate decision to withdraw."
Parlatore told CNN that Epshteyn was a "filter" between Trump and his legal team and at times prevented lawyers from providing Trump with information. He added that Epshteyn was not always "honest" with Trump and the rest of the attorneys.
—Acyn (@Acyn) May 20, 2023
In a statement, a Trump spokesperson confirmed that Parlatore "is no longer a member of the legal team."
"His statements regarding current members of the legal team are unfounded and categorically false," the spokesperson said.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/xWbOG1A
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