AUGUST 19, 2022
Alan Dershowitz says Trump will have a hard time building a new legal defense team. Rob Kim/Getty Images
- Alan Dershowitz says most reputable firms won’t let their lawyers go anywhere near Trump right now.
- “I’m not going near this with a 10-foot pole,” Dershowitz says one lawyer told him recently about Trump.
- “[Trump] should be worried about all these investigations,” another lawyer told Insider.
Alan Dershowitz, the lawyer who defended former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, told Insider that most reputable law firms aren’t letting their attorneys go anywhere near Trump as his legal issues snowball.
“All big firm lawyers have told me that their firms won’t let them do it,” Dershowitz said in an interview. “The firms won’t let them go near any case involving Trump. These are firms that want to continue to have clients, and they know that if they represent Donald Trump, they’ll lose a lot of clients.”
Dershowitz spoke from experience.
After he represented Trump in his second Senate impeachment trial following the deadly January 6 Capitol riot, Dershowitz said he lost job opportunities and many of his speaking engagements.
“Everybody who has called me has shown reluctance to do it,” he said. “They say their law firms won’t let them do it. Their husbands or wives won’t let them do it. Their children won’t let them do it. Their friends won’t let them do it even though they want to do it.”
Dershowitz said that since he represented Trump, at least six lawyers have asked him about what it was like working for the former president and if it affected his career. In one conversation, when Dershowitz told another attorney about his experience being blacklisted, he said the person responded, “I’m not going near this with a 10-foot pole.”
There are other reasons big-name lawyers are reluctant to represent the former president.
“He likes to run the show and as the old saying goes, if you represent yourself, you’ve got a fool for a client,” said one lawyer familiar with the Trump team’s thought process. “He’s a big believer in the public relations assault, which I’ve never seen work. I don’t see anybody with any experience it takes to represent a former president in a case like this. There’s a lot at stake here.”
Trump is currently at the center of a number of state and federal criminal investigations. At the forefront is the Justice Department’s inquiry into whether Trump broke three federal laws, including the Espionage Act, when he moved government records from the White House to Mar-a-Lago upon leaving office.
The department has also zeroed in on the former president in its sprawling criminal investigation into events surrounding the Capitol riot and subpoenaed a number of former top White House officials. Prosecutors also subpoenaed the National Archives for all the White House records it turned over to the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack.
In Georgia, the Fulton County district attorney’s office is investigating if Trump and his allies broke Georgia laws in their quest to nullify President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state. And in New York, the Manhattan district attorney’s office recently secured a plea deal with Trump’s chief bookkeeper, Allen Weisselberg, who this week pleaded guilty to more than a dozen felonies and agreed to implicate the Trump Organization.
“The classified documents case is an easy one,” the lawyer familiar with the Trump team’s thought process told Insider. “It’s open and shut. He took an administrative issue and turned it into a full blown criminal case.”
“He should be worried about all these investigations,” they added. “I think he’s a target of all of them and I think he’ll get indicted.”
Trump’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
