Trump’s former top lawyer said he left because of a fight with the legal team

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Washington CNN —

Donald Trump’s former lawyer Timothy Parlatore, who left the former president’s legal team last week, said Saturday that he left because of a feud between the group.

It has nothing to do with the case itself or the client, Parlatore told CNN’s Paula Reid in the Newsroom.

The real reason is because some individuals have made defending the president more difficult than necessary. In particular, there was one individual working for him, Boris Epshteyn, who really did everything he could to try to block us to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the president.

In response, a spokesman for Trump told CNN, Mr. Parlatore is no longer a member of the legal team. His statements about current members of the legal team are baseless and patently false.

Parlatore played a major role in the investigation into the Mar-a-Lago documents and organized searches for additional classified documents last year at several Trump properties and a storage unit in Florida.

He also testified in December before a grand jury in the Mar-a-Lago case as the Trumps’ team and the Justice Department became embroiled in a dispute in which the DOJ unsuccessfully sought to hold the former president in contempt for for not providing all classified documents. after receiving a subpoena in May 2022.

Parlatore said on Saturday that Epshteyn acted as a kind of filter to prevent us from getting information on the client. In my opinion, he was not very honest with us or the client on some things.

There are some things like searches that he tried to block, and then more recently, like coming to the end of this investigation where [special counsel] Jack Smith and ultimately Merrick Garland will make a decision on what to do while we put together our defensive strategy to help teach Merrick Garland how best to handle this thing, he keeps us from getting involved in that strategy, says Parlatore.

Epshteyn is a lawyer and adviser to Trump, who first joined his orbit as a special assistant.

He continued to advise Trump during the 2020 campaign and has remained close to him since he left office. Epshteyn has been involved in Trump’s legal response to federal investigations into the former president, and he appeared at Trump’s arraignment in New York last month despite not being one of the lawyers in the case.

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