Trump’s Fox & Friends Interview Is a Nightmare for His Lawyers
There is a really important reason that criminal defense lawyers on television constantly remind their clients to keep quiet: Clients have a nasty habit of saying dumb things that make the already complex task of mounting a legal defense into an even more difficult one. And in what is probably not a coincidence, the clients who seem to be victimized most frequently by their own self-incriminating verbosity are the ones who, it turns out, had a whole lot to hide all along.
On Thursday, Donald Trump celebrated his wife Melania's 48th birthday by calling into Fox & Friends for an interview that ended up stretching for nearly 30 minutes. Even by his standards, this was a particularly unhinged performance. His voice never fell below a yell, and by the end of it, all three hosts were wearing the same thin, vacant smile, presumably to conceal the fact that producers had been screaming, "CUT HIM OFF, FOR GOD'S SAKE" in their earpieces for most of it.
The president mostly played the hits, railing against the evils of James Comey, Hillary Clinton, Democrat obstructionists, Jim Comey, "NO COLLUSION," the Department of Justice, and the former FBI director he fired last May. But it was a brief tangent about his relationship with longtime fixer and archetypical casino pit boss Michael Cohen that is causing the most consternation for Rudy Giuliani, Ty Cobb, Judge Jeanine, and whoever else is on Trump's legal team these days. In a court filing on Wednesday, Cohen revealed that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in a lawsuit brought by Stormy Daniels, who seeks to return a $130,000 hush-money payment so that she can speak publicly about the extramarital affair she allegedly had with the president.
Watch:
Why Was Meek Mill in Jail?
Cohen, if you'll recall, has bravely insisted that he paid Daniels without Trump's knowledge. This position seems obviously absurd, but it has allowed Trump to deny any personal involvement in the transaction, which Cohen, in perhaps the saddest display of misplaced loyalty imaginable, financed by borrowing against his own home. And yet here is what Trump shouted into a smartphone today on Fox & Friends, his voice echoing throughout the hallways of the executive residence:
Michael would represent me and represent me on some things. He represents me like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, he represented me. And you know, from what I see he did absolutely nothing wrong.
You do not have to be a member of a state bar to understand that when your lawyer has been attempting to shield you from liability by insisting that he paid a six-figure sum on your behalf without telling you, publicly stating that your lawyer "represented" you in the matter is a devastating self-own. Just hours after the interview aired, the government cited it in a letter to the court as evidence that despite the president's social-media protestations, few (if any) of the Trump-adjacent documents seized from Michael Cohen's office earlier this month are likely to fall within the scope of attorney-client privilege.
This morning's spectacle underscores the reason that every reputable white-collar attorney in the country has been politely declining the opportunity to represent Donald Trump of late: The prestige normally associated with representing a sitting president isn't worth the hassle of managing a client who keeps incinerating carefully crafted defense strategies on live national television.
