Trump Lawyer May Have Exposed 'Detrimental' Information: Legal Expert
Tim Parlatore, the former attorney for Donald Trump, may have revealed "detrimental" information during a recent appearance on CNN, according to one legal expert.
Parlatore previously served the former president as a key lawyer in the Department of Justice's (DOJ) special counsel investigation of Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and residence. On Wednesday, he resigned from his position, as the DOJ and special counsel Jack Smith's probe of the matter continues to heat up. The former president, meanwhile, maintains his innocence in the case.
On Saturday, Parlatore appeared on CNN where he discussed his departure from the Trump legal team with host Paula Reid, claiming that his issues were not to do with the case or the client, but rather with the other members of the team who "made defending the president much harder than it needed to be."
In particular, he accused close Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn of doing "everything he could to try to block us, to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the president." He added that Epshteyn acted as a "filter" between Trump and the rest of the legal team, preventing them from getting important information to him or getting information from him.
On Monday, CNN's John King spoke with Shan Wu, a former federal prosecutor who now serves as a legal analyst for the network, about the implications of Parlatore's revealing interview. Wu characterized the situation as "extraordinary" when asked if such revelations in public were rare, and suggested that it could ultimately be detrimental to Trump.
"It's an extraordinary interview I would say and there's some concerns ethically," Wu said. "There are rules that say you cannot reveal client confidences and certainly infighting within the legal team about what's happening is part of the client confidences and it could be detrimental to the client, Trump."
Wu continued: "I really found it amazing that he was actually explaining his view of what [another Trump attorney] Evan Corcoran should have done in that writing because implicit in that is all sorts of criticisms of the writing itself, which again is potentially detrimental to the client, Trump. So a very unusual situation to see that sort of disagreement spill over. It's not unusual to have disagreements among a team, but you've got to keep it quiet."
A spokesperson for Trump told CNN after the interview aired that Parlatore's statements were "unfounded and categorically false." Newsweek reached out to Trump's press team via email for further comment.
