A 37-count criminal indictment against former president Donald Trump for detaining classified government records at his Mar-A-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida was unsealed today. The document alleges that Trump kept records that contained national defense information from federal officials and that he showed classified documents to others in 2021, which is after he had left office.
Shortly after the document was unsealed, Trump’s two attorneys on the case, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, quit. They did not delve into specific details as to why they were quitting other than saying “this is the logical moment” to sever professional ties with the former president.
“This morning we tendered our resignations as counsel to President Trump, and we will no longer represent him on either the indicted case or the January 6 investigation,” the attorneys wrote in a joint statement, per The New York Times.
“It has been an honor to have spent the last year defending him, and we know he will be vindicated in his battle against the Biden Administration’s partisan weaponization of the American justice system,” the attorneys said.
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“Now that the case has been filed in Miami, this is a logical moment for us to step aside and let others carry the cases through to completion,” they wrote. “We have no plans to hold media appearances that address our withdrawals or any other confidential communications we’ve had with the President or his legal team.
Instead of lambasting his former attorneys like he does his political opponents, Trump framed the sudden loss of Trusty and Rowley as a purposeful move in “fighting the Greatest Witch Hunt of all time.”
“For purposes of fighting the Greatest Witch Hunt of all time, now moving to the Florida Courts, I will be represented by Todd Blanche, Esq., and a firm to be named later. I want to thank Jim Trusty and John Rowley for their work, but they were up against a very dishonest, corrupt, evil, and “sick” group of people, the likes of which has not been seen before,” he wrote before adding that he will be announcing “additional lawyers” in the next few days.
Blanche is currently representing Trump in another criminal case in Manhattan Supreme Court, where he has been charged for falsifying business records having to do with hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels right before the 2016 presidential election.
Whether the reason for Trusty and Rowley quitting is truly just a legal logistical one or as a means from distancing themselves from the former president, it seems like things are only going to get messier for Trump leading up to the 2024 election.
