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As Just Security’s Ryan Goodman flagged last week, Donald Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina communicated with Stormy Daniels about potentially representing her in February 2018 as news of the hush money settlement broke.
By virtue of even consulting with her as a prospective client, Goodman mused, Tacopina could have a potential conflict of interest in representing Trump in the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case. Indeed, Tacopina himself appeared to understand this, telling CNN in 2018 that he could not discuss certain aspects of the Cohen case because of his “attorney-client relationship” with Daniels.
I have agreed with Goodman that New York’s Rules of Professional Conduct (and specifically Rules 1.18 and 1.9) make Tacopina’s representation of Trump, following on his consultation with Daniels, problematic at the very least. And I wondered whether Daniels’ meeting with the Manhattan DA’s office last week could have been precisely because of that conflict, and not, for example, about any prospective testimony she could provide to the grand jury.
Tacopina, through a representative, has since denied meeting or speaking with Daniels. And we still don’t know exactly why Daniels met with prosecutors last week. But NBC News has now confirmed that her lawyer, Clark Brewster, has provided the Manhattan DA’s office with emails and communications between Daniels and Tacopina’s law firm.
Brewster tells NBC News that these communications not only led to a conference with Tacopina, but that the emails go into “great detail” about the non-disclosure agreement Daniels executed with former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s sham consulting firm, Essential Consultants, and that much of what she shared qualifies as confidential. As a result, Brewster maintains, Tacopina has a “direct conflict of interest” in representing Trump.
As of Tuesday night, Tacopina was not actually engaged by Trump to represent him in any hush money case, sources told The Guardian, insinuating any claims of a conflict are overblown, if not misplaced. But legal ethicist Stephen Gillers of New York University Law School maintains that Tacopina is hardly in the clear.
In fact, even if Tacopina does not formally appear in any criminal case in Manhattan, Gillers explains, “The court has inherent power to ensure that lawyers obey their ethical obligations in matters before the court.”
That means that if Daniels or the Manhattan DA raises the issue, the court will be forced to address it. Watch this space.