President Donald Trump is toxic; he knows it, the world knows it. But it must be really bad when the president of the United States is so radioactive that 12 lawyers and counting have passed on representing him in the special counsel investigation.
According to CNN, lawyer Steven Molo, a former prosecutor who specializes in white-collar defense and courtroom litigation, essentially told the Trump administration, “Nah, I’m good, son” when asked about joining the Trump’s Titanic.
Molo is the latest attorney to pass on the offer to replace John Dowd on Trump’s personal legal team. Other lawyers who have declined to join Trump’s team to help the president during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 presidential campaign include former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson; Emmet Flood, who’s worked for multiple presidents; Robert Bennett, Bill Clinton’s attorney in the Paula Jones litigation; and Bob Giuffra, of Sullivan & Cromwell.
Molo, like attorneys Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, cited conflicts, which is just a nice way of saying that no one wants to play for this Cleveland Browns-ass administration.
“I regret a current conflict related to the investigation prevents me from representing the president at this time,” Molo told CNN.
Other lawyers told CNN that Trump is too difficult to manage as a client.
As CNN notes, the fact that the Trump administration even considered Molo was odd, considering that Molo battled the president in 2008 “when the then real estate developer sued Deutsche Bank to try to get out of paying $40 million of a construction loan Trump personally guaranteed.”
Molo, representing the bank, quoted Trump’s words from one of his books as part of his case against Trump: “‘I turned it on the banks and let them accept some of the blame. I figured it was the bank’s problem not mine,’” CNN reports.
It makes sense that no lawyer worth his weight would want to be associated with this Starbucks-ass administration. Trump is a nightmare client, and all 12 lawyers who’ve turned him down know this. I expect, at some point, for the administration to announce that Saul Goodman has agreed to join Trump’s legal team, since that’ll be about the best they can do.