Donald Trump May Have Won Iowa—but He Just Lost a Slew of Lawyers

Despite his overwhelming popularity at the Iowa caucuses, Donald Trump can’t seem to keep a grip on his legal representation.

On Monday, one of the GOP front-runner’s star attorneys, Joe Tacopina, filed a declaration to withdraw his firm from two of Trump’s upcoming legal battles: his hush-money criminal trial in Manhattan and the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, which Trump has been desperately trying to appeal since being found liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

“I respectfully submit this Declaration in support of [law firm Tacopina Seigel and DeOreo’s] motion, made pursuant to Local Civil Rule 27.1, to withdraw as counsel (including TSD attorneys Joseph Tacopina, Chad D. Seigel and Matthew G. DeOreo) for Trump, with such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper,” Tacopina wrote in the legal filing, effectively pulling three of Trump’s attorneys in one fell swoop.

It’s not clear why Tacopina decided to withdraw, though the decision comes during a year of extreme legal uncertainty for Trump, who is on the line for 91 criminal charges in four separate legal cases—34 of which stem from the hush-money case, in which Trump is accused of using his former fixer Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. That trial is set to begin in late March.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in the cases against him.

When asked for comment, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung did not acknowledge the recusal of Tacopina’s firm but instead slammed Trump’s upcoming legal challenges as partisan efforts to keep Trump away from the White House, reported The New York Times.

Trump “has the most experienced, qualified, disciplined, and overall strongest legal team ever assembled,” Cheung claimed, according to the outlet.

“A lawyer might attempt to withdraw as counsel of record for a client in a pending case for a number of reasons,” former federal prosecutor Michael McAuliffe told Newsweek.

“The attorney-client relationship might have suffered a fundamental breach of confidence, running in either or both directions. A strong-willed client who thinks he or she is more of a lawyer than the actual lawyer can create an untenable scenario for that lawyer to continue representing the client’s interests,” McAuliffe said, adding that there’s a chance the court may require Tacopina to identify a legal or factual basis to withdraw from representing the former president.

Just hours after Iowa Republican voters cemented his status as the party’s front-runner, Donald Trump headed to New York on Tuesday to face the music for sexually assaulting and then defaming E. Jean Carroll.

Trump swept Iowa Monday night with 51 percent of the votes, the largest margin of victory since the state began holding Republican caucuses. The win established him more firmly than ever as the front-runner for the party’s nomination and set him up for another success at the New Hampshire primary next week.

But first, Trump has to face Carroll in New York. Trump is on trial for comments he made in 2019, when he said Carroll accused him of raping her just to promote her memoir. Presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan has already determined the former president is liable for defamation, so the trial is primarily to set damages.

Trump did not appear at his first trial against Carroll in May. But this time around, he is in the courtroom and may even testify—although that will have to wait until January 22, the day before the New Hampshire primary. (Trump isn’t required to attend, and he certainly isn’t required to testify.)

There are strict limitations on what Trump can and cannot say if he does take the stand. Kaplan issued an order last week barring Trump and his lawyers from pushing conspiracies about Carroll’s lawyer or who might be paying the writer’s legal fees. They are prohibited from making comments “concerning Ms. Carroll’s past romantic relationships, sexual disposition, and prior sexual experiences,” and they cannot argue that Trump did not sexually abuse Carroll or act with actual malice when making his comments about her.

Kaplan has also ruled that Trump can’t argue he didn’t rape Carroll. Although Trump was found liable for sexual abuse, Kaplan has repeatedly stated that Trump “‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”

In other words, a federal judge has recognized that Trump is a rapist.

Trump has already shown he is unwilling to listen to judges’ rules after he went on a courtroom rant on the last day of his financial fraud trial in New York. So there is no guarantee he’ll stick to Kaplan’s ruling if allowed to testify against Carroll.

In May, a jury unanimously found Trump liable for sexual abuse and battery against Carroll in the mid-1990s and for defaming her in 2022 while denying the assault. He was ordered to pay her $5 million in damages.

Kaplan ruled in September that since Trump has already been found liable for sexual abuse, his 2019 comments are by default defamatory. Carroll is now seeking at least $10 million in damages.

Republican lawmakers in Kansas want to make sure you know they don’t care about the will of the voters. State representatives have introduced a bill completely banning abortion, despite Kansans voting less than two years ago to keep protections for the procedure in the state constitution.

House Bill 2492 was introduced Wednesday by eight Republican state representatives, seven of whom are men. The measure would ban all abortions except those necessary to save the patient’s life.

The bill bans prescribing, distributing, selling, or donating abortion medication. Anyone who helps someone get an abortion could face civil proceedings, while doctors who perform abortions would face a minimum fine of $10,000 per procedure.

The measure flies directly in the face of the will of the voters, as noted by Amber Sellers, the advocacy director of Trust Women, a pro-abortion nonprofit in Wichita, Kansas. “Kansans spoke—loudly—on the issue,” Sellers told the Kansas Reflector. “It’s time for anti-abortion lawmakers to wake up, remember and finally listen to the message that voters continue to send.”

In August 2022, less than two months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Kansans voted overwhelmingly to keep language in the state constitution protecting the right to abortion. The vote proved to be a bellwether, with multiple states voting to increase abortion protections since.

But that didn’t stop Kansas Republican lawmakers from trying to circumvent the will of the people. The Sunflower State GOP has tried to pass a bill that would let local governments of individual towns and cities ban abortion, as well as a bill that would force doctors to lie to their patients about abortion medication. Both measures were ultimately unsuccessful.

And just as the Kansas vote turned out to be an indicator of what voters wanted nationwide, so too have Republicans in other states followed the Kansas GOP’s model. Most recently, Ohio residents voted in November to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution. Ohio Republican lawmakers immediately set about finding ways to enact legislation that would undermine the results.

If the Kansas bill passes the state legislature, which is controlled by Republicans, it will likely be vetoed by Democratic Governor Laura Kelly. The GOP does have a large enough majority to override Kelly’s veto, but the abortion ban is unlikely to survive a legal challenge. The state Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the Kansas constitution protects abortion rights, meaning the bill violates those rights.

A New York state judge on Friday ordered Donald Trump to pay The New York Times almost $400,000 in legal fees for a lawsuit he brought against the paper in 2021.

Trump accused the paper and three Times reporters of conspiring with his niece Mary Trump, who has contributed to The New Republic, in an “insidious plot” to illicitly obtain his tax records. The Times published a series of stories on Trump’s taxes in 2018 that revealed the president wasn’t the self-made billionaire he claimed he was. In fact, most of his wealth came from his parents or from dodging taxes, as his businesses continued to bleed money elsewhere.

State Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed dismissed Trump’s case in May, writing in his ruling that Trump’s claims “fail as a matter of constitutional law.”

Reed issued another ruling on Friday ordering Trump to pay the paper and the reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow, and Russ Buettner a total of $392,638.69 in legal fees.

Trump made waves by refusing to release his tax returns when he first ran for president in 2016, which is not required but is precedent. He then actually brought more attention to his taxes by continually refusing to release the documents to the public or at the very least to Congress.

The House Ways and Means Committee finally obtained six years’ worth of the former president’s tax returns in late November 2022. After first reviewing the documents behind closed doors, the committee released Trump’s tax returns. The documents revealed Trump listed large charitable donations, millions of dollars in goods sold, and massive financial losses each year to avoid paying taxes.

Representative Jamie Raskin demanded Friday that Donald Trump return the nearly $8 million he was paid by foreign governments while he was president.

A report released last week by House Oversight Committee Democrats found that Trump made more than $7.8 million during his first two years in office. He did not ask Congress for permission to keep the money, as is required by the Constitution.

“I write today to demand that you immediately return to the American people the $7,886,072 that we know you have accepted from foreign governments,” Raskin said in a letter to Trump.

The Maryland Democrat noted that the report findings were likely incomplete, as it covers just half of Trump’s presidency and transactions at just four of his more than 500 businesses.

“I also demand that you give Congress a full accounting of the money, benefits and other emoluments ‘of any kind whatever’ you pocketed from foreign governments or their agents during your term as President and that you return the total sum of these foreign emoluments,” Raskin said in his letter.

“Your acceptance of foreign emoluments while in office was a stunning violation of the U.S. Constitution—and a profound betrayal of the interests of the United States and the trust of the American people.”

The money came from some of the “world’s most unsavory regimes,” according to the report, and Trump never asked for congressional approval to keep the funds, as mandated by the Constitution. The countries included China—which gave Trump $5.5 million, the largest sum listed in the report—Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Hungary.

Trump isn’t even trying to hide the fact that he received payments from foreign governments. In a Fox News town hall Wednesday night, Trump dismissed the amount as “a small amount of money.”

He then justified the fact that he received foreign payments by arguing he was “doing services for them.”

“People were staying in these massive hotels, these beautiful hotels,” Trump said. “I don’t get $8 million for doing nothing.”