Donald Trump mistakenly hires new lawyer connected to Rod Rosenstein’s appointment of Robert Mueller
Donald Trump would like nothing more than to figure out how to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who originally appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Trump regularly tweets horrible things about Rosenstein, and clearly despises the guy. But when Trump found himself in a new legal jam this week as the FBI conducted a raid against his “attorney” Michael Cohen, Trump hired a new attorney – and it turns out he accidentally hired a lawyer who is connected to Rosenstein and Mueller.
After a failed search, Trump had announced on Twitter that he wasn’t hiring any new attorneys. Then suddenly, after the Cohen raid, a new attorney named Joanna Hendon showed up representing Trump in court on Friday. This evening MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell pieced together that Hendon’s law firm, Spears & Imes, sent a letter to Rod Rosenstein encouraging him to appoint a Special Counsel. This helped provide legal cover for Rosenstein when he made the decision a short time later to appoint Mueller.
The letter in question was not signed by Hendon, but it was signed by David Spears and Linda Imes, the two namesakes of the firm. Clearly the law firm doesn’t think it’s a conflict of interest for Hendon to represent Trump in the matter of the Cohen raid, or it wouldn’t have let her take the job. This makes legal sense, as the the Cohen raid was under the legal jurisdiction of the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, and thus was technically not part of Mueller’s investigation. But it’s the kind of connection that Trump would have found troubling, if he’d done an ounce of homework before hiring the firm.
So now Donald Trump is stuck being represented by an attorney whose law firm was partially responsible for Rod Rosenstein’s appointment of Robert Mueller. Will Trump fire Hendon in response? She’s currently taking the lead in the court proceedings in relation to the Cohen raid. If Trump fires her out of spite, he’ll even further harm his own legal prospects.
