Ivanka Trump ditches Trump family attorney in New York Attorney General case

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Whenever someone ditches their attorney in the middle of a case, it always raises questions about why. When multiple people on the wrong end of a government investigation are represented by the same attorney, and then only one of them ditches that attorney, it raises even more eyebrows. And that’s precisely what just happened in the New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil probe into the Trump Organization.

Ivanka Trump and her two adult brothers were all being represented in the case by the same attorney. But now Forbes says that Ivanka has ditched this attorney, even as her brothers have retained the attorney. This has set off all kinds of speculation about what it might mean.

When multiple people in a case are represented by the same attorney, it means they’re using a shared defense strategy. When one of them changes attorneys but the others don’t, it often (but not always) means that one of them is shifting to a new defense strategy that is incompatible with the strategy the others are using. In other words, it often means someone has decided to cooperate against someone else.

It doesn’t always mean that. It can be a matter of one person growing dissatisfied with the attorney, and trying but failing to convince the others to ditch that attorney, before ditching that attorney unilaterally.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that the New York Attorney General’s case is a civil probe targeting Donald Trump and his three most prominent kids. This could hypothetically be a matter of Ivanka deciding to cooperate against Donald, even as her brothers want to stand by Donald. So rather than the kids turning against each other, it could be about who’s willing to give up their father and who isn’t.

In any case, one common theme with these kinds of developments is that there’s typically more to the story than what initially surfaces. Before long another shoe usually drops, which provides clearer insight into what’s really going on. But any time a defendant is ditching an attorney midstream, it’s usually good news for the prosecutor one way or the other.

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