Ex-Trump Attorney Calls Out Current Trump Counsel Boris Epstheyn for Interfering With Classified Doc Search
Former Trump attorney Tim Parlatore said he left the ex-president’s legal team because of infighting and the interference he encountered from Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn.
Parlatore, who was defending Trump over the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal, spoke with CNN’s Paula Reid on Saturday about his reasons for leaving the team. The attorney explained that Epshteyn made defending Trump “much harder than it needed to be” because he kept blocking Parlatore and subverting his efforts to formulate a defense against Jack Smith’s special counsel investigation.
Ultimately, it got to a point where — it’s difficult enough fighting against DOJ, and in this case, the special counsel. But when you also have people within the tent that are also trying to undermine you, block you, and really make it so that I can’t do what I know that I need to do as a lawyer. And when I am getting into fights like that, that’s detracting from what is necessary to defend the client and ultimately was not in the client’s best interest. So I made the decision to withdraw.
Parlatore’s admission of tension with Epshteyn follows an interview where he threw fellow Trump attorney Joe Tacopina under the bus while he was representing the ex-president on the Stormy Daniels case. Parlatore explained that Epshteyn acted “as kind of a filter to prevent us from getting information to the client, getting information from the client.”
“In my opinion, he was not very honest with us or the client on certain things,” Parlatore said. He added that Epshteyn “attempted to interfere” with Parlatore’s search for classified documents in Trump’s Bedminster property, and “we had to eventually overcome him.”
The Washington Post obtained a Trump campaign statement dismissing Parlatore’s remarks, saying he “is no longer a member of the legal team. His statements regarding current members of the legal team are unfounded and categorically false.”
Watch above via CNN.
