Inside the Implosion of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Legal Team

Right up until the day Donald Trump’s federal indictment was unsealed, the legal team tasked with defending him was engaged in petty internal feuds — including fights over TV appearances, accusations of disloyalty, and even a so-called “coup,” three people familiar with the situation, as well as others on or close to Trump’s legal defense, tell Rolling Stone.

The clashes were dramatic enough that Friday, hours before Trump’s federal indictment in the Mar-a-Lago documents probe was unsealed, top lawyers John Rowley and Jim Trusty abruptly resigned. The resignations followed last month’s departure of Tim Parlatore, another Trump attorney who decided he’d seen enough of the internal turmoil.

On the other side of the long-brewing conflict was Boris Epshteyn, one of the former president’s most prominent legal advisers. Epshteyn has overseen Trump’s various legal defenses — and also found himself the target of investigations: His cellphone was seized by federal authorities investigating the Trump team’s efforts to keep him in power after his 2020 election defeat.

Clashes with Epshteyn had Rowley and Trusty eyeing their exits for weeks before their departure, according to three sources familiar with the situation. They, like Parlatore before them, would often chafe at Epshteyn’s influence over their work. The duo often complained that Epshteyn was unqualified to oversee their defense of Trump, and, sources say, they were baffled by edits the adviser made to their legal work. At one point, Epshteyn inserted Trump’s dominance in the 2024 Republican primary into a draft of a court filing meant only for a judge.

“Why the f*** would a judge want to be bothered with that?” says one of the sources, summarizing the legal team’s frustrations at the time.

Some of Trump’s legal team had also been angered by what one person familiar with the matter describes as a soft “coup” among the core team, with a different Trump lawyer, Todd Blanche, in the past several weeks being given a larger portfolio and more influence over this specific team long before the announcement of his ascension. One reason this caused such tension was because Blanche was viewed as loyal to Epshteyn, who had pushed Trump to make Blanche lead counsel on the case. Other attorneys on the team objected, arguing that it constituted a conflict of interest, due to Blanche already serving as Epshteyn’s attorney.

In an email, Trusty declined to comment to Rolling Stone. He wrote on Monday, “I don’t plan on being a kiss and tell kind of guy. Sorry.” Rowley, Blanche, and Epshteyn did not immediately provide comment on this story.

Reached for comment, Parlatore referred Rolling Stone to his comments to CNN’s Paula Reid last month, which included the attorney saying, “There are certain individuals that made defending the [former] president much harder than it needed to be. In particular, there is one individual who works for him, Boris Epshteyn, who had really done everything he could to try to block us — to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the president.”

Furthermore, prior to the recent exodus, some of Trump’s lawyers would regularly trash Epshteyn behind his back, at times using various derisive nicknames such as “Porous” Epshteyn, related to their private suspicions that he was leaking material to the press, and “Boris Inept-shteyn.”

In response to this reporting, a person close to Trump’s legal team simply notes: “Boris is absolutely focused on protecting President Trump from every angle — legal, political, and media.”

Despite all the tumult, Epshteyn remains at Trump’s side as other names fall by the wayside. Since last year, numerous lawyers and others close to Trump have urged him to sideline Epshteyn, if not dump the counselor altogether. “Trump has put a lot of trust in Boris [in his post-presidency],” says one source close to the ex-president. “People trying to convince the [former] president to get rid of Boris has very often had the opposite intended effect.”

One of these intra-legal-team fights with Epshteyn was over, of all things, television appearances.

In late April, Parlatore and other involved attorneys were barred from doing media appearances specifically about a letter they drafted to the House Intelligence Committee telling Congress that the Justice Department “should be ordered to stand down” from its classified documents probe in favor of an investigation by the intelligence committee. 

The letter, which revealed that documents relating to Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders were likely among those found at his residence, argued that the papers arrived at Mar-a-Lago because White House staff “simply swept all documents from the President’s desk and other areas into boxes,” according to a copy of the letter reviewed by CNN.

Sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone that the letter infuriated Trump after Epshteyn and others told him its contents could undermine his legal defense. This instance gave Epshteyn more ammunition to advise the former president that other attorneys could not be trusted to work without supervision.

In recent months, the level of distrust among Trump’s legal advisers — who’ve been tasked with keeping him out of legal jeopardy in an Espionage Act investigation — was so high that they’d routinely accuse one another of leaking to the media, with or without actual evidence. Epshteyn has himself claimed to Trump that Parlatore was a prolific leaker, and someone who couldn’t be trusted. Epshteyn has also privately argued to Trump that Parlatore was using the case and his media appearances to promote himself, the sources say.

Recently, Trump has vented to several close associates about why “loyal” attorneys have been hard to find on this, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. The former president has blamed some of the tumult among his higher-profile lawyers on clashing egos and certain individuals competing for limelight and power.

Amid the departures, Trump and his close advisers have been hunting for seasoned attorneys, in and also outside of Florida, to join his defense in the classified documents case, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation. But the dream team has yet to materialize.

Multiple well-known Florida lawyers have recently been approached, though several promptly refused the chance to rep Trump in this particular case. In the past few days, some people close to the former president tried to entice Alan Dershowitz — the celebrity lawyer who defended then-President Trump for his first impeachment — to officially join or at least consult for the Blanche-led team.

Dershowitz, who has been declining recurring offers from Trump and his advisers to rep the ex-president in different cases since 2021, once again said no thanks.

But the internal conflict plaguing the legal team is a hallmark of the former president’s leadership, as Trump has continually fostered rivalries and hostility within his own teams. But familiar though it may be, the inner turmoil is unlikely to be very helpful to Trump as he faces a federal indictment his own former attorney general referred to as “very, very damning.”

On Friday, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment of Trump that accuses him of willfully retaining classified documents, obstruction of justice, and false statements. The Special Counsel’s Office alleges that Trump knowingly retained classified documents — including U.S. war plans and information about the U.S. military’s nuclear arsenal — at his Mar-a-Lago club and intentionally trying to hide them from law enforcement following a subpoena requesting their return. 

In addition to the infighting among Trump’s lawyers, the indictment unsealed on Friday also revealed that Trump allegedly worked to undermine his own attorney’s efforts in their dealings with the FBI. Prosecutors claim that Trump worked with his aide Walt Nauta to move classified documents in order “to conceal them from Trump’s attorney, the FBI, and the grand jury” shortly before attorneys carried out a search for the missing papers on behalf of law enforcement.

Prosecutors also charged Trump’s personal aide Nauta with lying to the FBI about his alleged role in initially concealing the documents from the FBI and conspiracy to obstruct justice. 

On top of this, Trump has already been indicted and arraigned in Manhattan in a separate criminal probe related to a hush-money scandal. The former president and leading 2024 GOP presidential candidate is facing an array of other lawsuits and high-stakes investigations, including Special Counsel Jack Smith’s separate probe into Trump’s efforts to cling to power after losing the 2020 race to Joe Biden.