Left: Attorney Joe Tacopina questions a witness on behalf of Rakim Mayers aka A$AP Rocky in November 2023. (Allison Dinner/EPA via AP, Pool)./Right: Donald Trump at a news conference in New York on Jan. 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File).
Donald Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina has filed a motion to withdraw as the former president’s defense attorney just ahead of a criminal trial in New York where Trump faces allegations he falsified records in an attempt to hide roughly $130,000 in hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
The withdrawal was first reported by The New York Times on Monday.
Notably, court documents show Tacopina has also withdrawn from Trump’s appeal in the E. Jean Carroll case, where a New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing the writer in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the 1990s and then defamed her when he accused her of lying about the accusation and argued, “she’s not my type.”
The concise motion withdrawing from the Carroll case is devoid of significant details.
Tacopina told Law&Crime via email Monday that he had no comment.
Jury selection was slated to begin in a second Carroll trial in New York on Tuesday. The latest trial was for comments Trump made following the jury’s decision in the first lawsuit. Following the jury’s verdict, Trump again denied the allegations and made disparaging comments about Carroll.
It is unclear what if any this departure will have on Trump’s overall litigation schedule given the criminal trial in New York was expected for March. Worth noting however is that Tacopina did not represent Trump in New York by his lonesome: attorney Todd Blanche is also on the roster there. Blanche also represents Trump in the Washington, D.C., election subversion case.
Trump tried to delay the Carroll trial determining damages he owes the writer last week when news arrived that his wife and former first lady Melania Trump’s mother Amalija Knavs had died. Trump wanted to attend her funeral in Florida, court records showed, and asked for a weeklong delay.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan denied the request while extending his condolences. He also noted Trump is not required to attend the civil proceedings.
Trump held a presidential election rally in Iowa and spent part of the weekend blasting Kaplan on social media, calling the judge a “very bad person” who suffers from “Trump derangement syndrome,” The Independent reported.
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