Donald Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina may have a conflict of interest because Stormy Daniels shared “confidences” with him about her sexual encounter with the former president, a lawyer for the adult-film star said.
Daniels is at the center of a hush-money case against Trump, who pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records at his company related to $130,000 he paid to buy her silence.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg claims Trump wanted to bury damaging information to boost his electoral prospects in 2016 and directed his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to pay Daniels. Trump repaid Cohen in installments, which were recorded as legal expenses in his records.
Daniels’s lawyer Clark Brewster wrote Tacopina about the potential conflict in an April 3 letter, which Bragg’s office filed Thursday in the former president’s case. Brewster said Daniels reached out to Tacopina’s firm in February 2018 to represent her after the allegations were originally became public. While Daniels later hired Michael Avenatti, Brewster says that Daniels shared important “confidences” about her encounter with Trump.
“The confidential communications she shared with you and your colleagues — leading to a quote of a retainer fee — consisted of shared confidences regarding an opposing party clearly identified in those communications,” Brewster wrote. “For you to now represent that opposing party — Donald Trump — would be an ethical breach damaging Ms. Clifford and potentially leading to professional discipline.”
At Trump’s arraignment Tuesday, prosecutor Christopher Conroy told the judge that Tacopina may have a conflict representing the former president, saying he’d had “privileged communications with Stormy Daniels, who we expect to be a witness.”
Manhattan State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan advised Trump about the potential conflict, but at Tuesday’s hearing, Tacopina insisted there was none.
“I never met Stormy Daniels,” Tacopina said.
“She called my office, like many people do, and tried to hire me or asked about hiring me,” Tacopina told Merchan. “She spoke to an associate and a paralegal, gave some facts, sent over a document, and it went no further than that. We refused the case. I did not offer her representation. Didn’t speak to her. Didn’t meet with her. And it is as simple as that.”
Brewster said Daniels’s consultation with Tacopina’s firm was “about substantially the same subject matter” as the hush money payment.
Tacopina has said that Daniels never shared any privileged information with him or members of his firm about the hush-money payments. Any privileges were waived anyway, he said, because she discussed them in a tell-all book she wrote about Trump called “Full Disclosure.”
Tacopina told Merchan Tuesday that if the judge was concerned about a potential conflict, he wouldn’t question Daniels when she testified at Trump’s trial.
