Milo Yiannopoulos Will Represent Himself In His Lawsuit Against Simon & Schuster

On Monday, it was revealed that former Twitter troll Milo Yiannopoulos had parted ways with the law offices of Meister Seelig & Fein in his lawsuit against former publisher Simon & Schuster. A court filing obtained by BuzzFeed News revealed Yiannopoulus’ Boston-based counsel’s “withdrawal” from the case but did not provide a reason for the decision. Yet despite the immediate barage of jokes citing the viral editor’s note on the publicly released draft of Dangerous — the book project worth a reported $250,000 upfront that Simon & Schuster abandoned — it seems the firm’s decision to leave the case was quite amicable.

According to a statement that Yiannopoulos’ representative provided to BuzzFeed News, the plaintiff insisted his former legal counsel “were excellent litigators on my behalf.” As for the “disagreement” that arose between them, it supposedly had nothing to do with there being any conflict between them and everything to do with Simon & Schuster’s “discovery tactics”:

“We asked that all pertinent documents be open to the public record. But Simon & Schuster demanded that virtually all of the documents in this lawsuit remain confidential, and had them classified ‘attorney’s eyes only,’ meaning that I am not even allowed to see what has been said about me and my book in my own lawsuit. In other words, S&S has persuaded the court to withhold from me the documents I need to read to in order to properly assess my own case.”

Despite the fact that Yiannopoulos’ former legal counsel’s entire purpose was to represent him in court (so he didn’t have to), the former troll “will now be representing [himself] pro se.” You can read the full statement below.

As fun as it might be for a future news cycle, however, Milo’s one-man war against the book publisher will probably look nothing like a My Cousin Vinny sequel.

(Via BuzzFeed News)