Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin Bragg needs to know if former President Trump’s principal lawyer has a battle of curiosity involving Stormy Daniels by means of her prior session with his agency.
In an April 14 letter to the decide dealing with Trump’s prison continuing, Assistant District Lawyer Susan Hoffinger requested extra details about lawyer Joe Tacopina’s earlier correspondence with the porn starlet.
Tacopina has acknowledged that Daniels reached out to his agency for potential illustration in her long-standing tussle with Trump again in 2018, earlier than she retained media-darling-turned-felon Michael Avenatti.
In a CNN interview that yr, host Don Lemon quizzed Tacopina about Daniels’ entanglements with Trump given his workplace’s contact along with her.
DONALD TRUMP’S NYC CASE MAY BE HEADED IN ONLY ONE DIRECTION, FORMER PROSECUTORS REVEAL
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is concentrating on former President Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina, proper, for removing over his ties to porn star Stormy Daniels, left. (Picture by Evan Agostini/Picture by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/by way of Getty Pictures)
“Did you get any impression that she could have signed an NDA beneath duress and was she afraid for her bodily security?” Lemon requested, in response to Hoffinger’s letter.
“Sure, in fact, and I can’t actually discuss my impressions or any conversations we had as a result of there’s an attorney-client privilege that attaches even to a session,” Tacopina responded.
At Trump’s arraignment final month, Tacopina denied personally consulting with Daniels and has stated flatly that his agency declined to tackle her civil case in opposition to the previous president.
READ MANHATTAN PROSECUTORS LETTER TO JUDGE MERCHAN QUESTIONING TRUMP LAWYER JOE TACOPINA’S TIES TO STORMY DANIELS
The difficulty was raised after Daniels’ lawyer Clark Brewster filed a letter with the court docket on the eve of Trump’s arraignment arguing that Tacopina must be disqualified from the case.
Trump is accused of 34 felony counts of falsifying enterprise data stemming from a $130,000 hush-money fee to the grownup movie actress.
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“We refused the case,” Tacopina advised Manhattan Supreme Courtroom Justice Juan Merchan at Trump’s arraignment. “I didn’t provide her illustration. Didn’t converse to her. Didn’t meet along with her. And it is so simple as that.”
Nonetheless, Daniels appeared to reference private correspondence with Tacopina in her ebook “Full Disclosure,” Manhattan prosecutors famous of their letter.
Stormy Daniels, left, says former President Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, must be disqualified as his lawyer since she consulted together with his legislation agency. (Phillip Faraone/Getty Pictures/Picture by Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Pictures)
“She writes that earlier than retaining Mr. Avenatti, she spoke with a ‘very high-powered lawyer’ who appeared to take her name only for the curiosity issue, dragged it out for a few weeks and didn’t appear to share her ardour, so she ended it,” the letter states. “She wrote that she was ‘anxious that this man now knew my story and my technique for confronting Cohen and Trump.'”
Manhattan prosecutors now need Merchan to order Tacopina to show over all correspondence his agency had with Daniels and to “disclose any steps he has taken to alleviate this potential battle.”
In his personal April 12 submitting to the court docket, Tacopina blasted Daniels’ letter on the eve of Trump’s historic arraignment as an “apparent publicity stunt,” noting that the missive, authored by an lawyer who is just not licensed to observe legislation in New York, was promptly launched to the press.
READ JOE TACOPINA’S LETTER DENYING A CONFLICT OF INTERESTING INVOLVING STORM DANIELS
In her session with Tacopina’s agency, the topic solely targeted on whether or not her non-disclosure settlement with Trump was enforceable, the main points of which she has extensively mentioned in a flurry of media interviews, her personal ebook and civil lawsuits, in response to his letter.
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Trump is accused of falsifying inner enterprise data when he had his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, organize the $130,000 hush-money fee to Daniels throughout his 2016 presidential marketing campaign to maintain her quiet about an alleged sexual encounter. He has denied the affair.
Trump ultimately paid Cohen again a complete of $420,000, and Bragg asserts that the funds had been improperly categorized as authorized bills and implied the association violated marketing campaign and tax legal guidelines.
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The 2024 Republican presidential candidate has dismissed the case as a manufactured and politically-motivated witch hunt with no authorized advantage.
Emmett Jones contributed to this report.
