Attorney Timothy Parlatore leaves the U.S. Federal District Court on December 22, 2022 in Washington, D.C.
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A lawyer who quit Donald Trump’s legal team this past week attributed his decision Saturday to strategy disagreements with a detailed adviser to the previous president.
Timothy Parlatore, who had been a key lawyer for Trump in a Justice Department special counsel investigation into the potential mishandling of classified documents at his Florida estate, told CNN in an interview on Saturday that there have been “certain individuals that made defending the president much harder than it needed to be.”
He singled out Boris Epshteyn, one other lawyer and top Trump adviser in multiple criminal investigations, whom he accused of “doing all the things he could to attempt to block us to forestall us from doing what we could to defend the president.”
Parlatore disclosed Wednesday that he was resigning from the Trump legal team, a move that comes because the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith shows signs of winding down and nearing a call on whether or to not bring charges against the previous president. His comments Saturday provided additional context for the choice.
In an announcement responding to Parlatore’s comments, a Trump spokesman said, “Mr. Parlatore isn’t any longer a member of the legal team. His statements regarding current members of the legal team are unfounded and categorically false.”
In his interview, Parlatore said Epshteyn had served as a “filter” in stopping the legal team from getting information in regards to the investigation to or from Trump.
He also said Epshteyn had resisted the thought of the legal team organizing months ago a search of Trump’s property in Bedminster, Latest Jersey, for potential additional classified documents, and that he had impeded a defense strategy aimed toward helping “educate (Attorney General) Merrick Garland as to how best to handle this matter.” Parlatore was considered one of the authors of a letter last month to the chairman of the House intelligence committee laying out a series of potential defenses within the investigation.
“It’s difficult enough fighting against DOJ, and on this case a special counsel, but when you furthermore mght have people throughout the tent which might be also attempting to undermine you, block you and really make it in order that I am unable to do what I do know that I want to do as a lawyer,” Parlatore said.
“And after I am stepping into fights like that, that is detracting from what’s obligatory to defend the client and ultimately was not within the client’s best interest, so I made the choice to withdraw,” he added.
