President Donald Trump’s (hot mess) legal team has seen better days, to say the least. Throughout the course of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the possibility of Russian collusion during said campaign, the turnover rate for the sitting president’s own legal counsel has been alarming. Here at NBN Politics, we fully understand that staying up to date with a Trump judicial squad facing the potential for obstruction of justices charges, among others, is daunting. Especially when everything might look completely different next week. So NBN is saving you a headache: we broke it down by still-relevant lawyers for you still somehow politically-engaged individuals:
1. Michael Cohen: The unofficial poster child for any/all interactions with the president as measured on a Richter scale of the good, the bad and the ugly, Cohen is currently under investigation himself for possible bank and wire fraud, among other things. He’s most infamously known as the stable genius who paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 out of pocket in exchange for her silence about her affair with Trump just 11 days before the election. This led to a domino effect of (extremely warranted) events including an FBI raid of Cohen’s offices, a “taint team” being set up to review all the materials seized during the raid and Cohen’s firing as Trump’s personal attorney and “fixer."
2. Michael Avenatti: Fun fact: this man is not part of Trump’s law squad...but he is currently the point person for Stormy Daniels’ case against the president. Please take a moment to remind yourself that an overwhelming majority of Americans have become desensitized to fun political bombshells (no pun intended) like this one where POTUS is being sued by a widely renowned porn star. Mr. Avenatti can be credited with several things, the most relevant probably being his lengthy (comparatively, of course) career arc as Ms. Daniels’ legal consultant. Jokes aside, he was the one to file a lawsuit against Trump in the beginning of March stating that the non-disclosure agreement between the two parties was void because Trump didn’t sign it himself. This week, Avenatti is allegedly working diligently toward “connecting the dots between the Russia probe and the Michael Cohen investigation."
3. Ty Cobb: The mustached matador himself, Ty Cobb joined Trump’s law squad for a brief stint spanning from July 2017 to about a week ago. While Cobb’s retirement may have been a career move a long-time coming, as the ex-lead lawyer on the team his tenure highlights included (but are not limited to): preaching White House cooperation with Mueller and his investigators, a lot of convincing Trump to testify on the case and turning over ~an alleged~ shitload of “pertinent records” to the special counsel.
4. Rudy Giuliani: The present goon who has been tasked with representing Mr. Trump, Giuliani joined the president’s law squad about a month ago as a spokesman/mediator/strategist. As a former U.S. Attorney and mayor of New York, it’d be reasonable to infer that Mr. Giuliani has had a substantial amount of experience handling himself in front of the media as a prominent public figure. Unfortunately, the past few weeks have been catastrophic for Trump’s current personal attorney. He’s not only failed to put an end to the Stormy Daniels saga, but has also done a bang-up job of raising so many more questions over providing answers on every single media appearance he’s participated in to date. In an attempt to get his facts straight(ish), Giuliani clarified last week that he misspoke during his first interview on Fox & Friends stating that, “There is no campaign violation. The payment [from Cohen to Daniels] was made to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the President’s family.”