Donald Trump doesn’t have a great history with lawyers. Some turn on him, and how. Others find their lives upended, with no help from the big guy himself. John Lauro is a newbie to Trump’s clown car legal team, and lately he’s been thrown in the deep end, spending last weekend working the media circuit, making all sorts of laughable comments about his client’s third indictment. During one podcast appearance, he got strangely frank about how he’s not sure that Trump should be out there making threatening comments about an upcoming trial.
As per Politico, Lauro spoke with Florida defense attorney David Markus on Sunday, the day before he and his team filed a predictably bizarre response to Judge Tanya Chutkan about Trump’s latest social media antics. At that time, Lauro admitted they hadn’t agreed on how to handle that issue, which he said had to be handled “with the utmost delicacy.” Those words, of course, are not in Trump’s limited vocabulary, which has made Lauro and his colleagues’ job, well, a bit difficult.
“I think it’s a little bit different than our standard case where we would pull our hair out if a client commented on a prosecutor or a judge,” Lauro admitted. “He feels strongly that he needs to speak out, and he also, in particular, looks at this prosecution as a political prosecution. I think, in his mind, it’s sort of fair game from a political perspective to make these comments.“
Lauro maintained that he’s trying, against all odds, to “conduct the proceedings in a dignified manner.” But you try doing that when your client keeps firing off self-incriminating and dangerous social media posts.
“To the extent that I can make any appropriate suggestions to a client, I do,” Lauro explained. “But as we know, David, sometimes clients follow our suggestions, sometimes they don’t.”
In the meantime, Lauro is just trying to do his job, which sometimes entails saying surreal things like Donald Trump enacted a “peaceful transfer of power.” He’s also “100 percent” sure that a “central witness” at the trial will be Trump’s former VP Mike Pence, who’s running against him and even occasionally says semi-forceful things about his old number one. Lauro’s already hard at work at a likely cross-examination, even reading his memoir, So Help Me God, not once but twice. That can’t be fun.
“I’m trying to get into his head, quite frankly,” Lauro said. “I’m trying to understand his personality, who he is. I”m trying to be Mike Pence to understand where he’s coming from.”
Good luck with all that.
(Via Politico)