By Andy Sullivan, Jacqueline Thomsen and Joseph Ax WASHINGTON Former U.S. President Donald Trump was hit with a

Lawyer Joe Tacopina is the head of the legal team representing former President Donald Trump in the civil rape trial against former Elle advice columnist E Jean Carroll. Mr Tacopina began closing argument in the trial on 8 May, stemming from Ms Carroll’s allegation that Mr Trump raped her in a New York City department store dressing room in 1995 or 1996. The attorney is also representing the ex-president in the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation into his alleged hush money payments to women claiming to have had affairs with him. A Manhattan grand jury voted earlier this year to indict Mr Trump for falsifying business records in connection to a 2016 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels for her to remain silent about a 2006 affair she claims to have had with Mr Trump, a claim he denies. Here’s what we know about the ex-president’s top lawyer: Brooklyn-born lawyer known for explosive media appearances Mr Tacopina, 56, was born in Brooklyn and has made a name for himself with explosive media appearances as he defends Mr Trump. He has also represented rapper Meek Mill and baseball player Alex Rodriguez, according to the New York Post. Mr Tacopina is the founder and managing partner of the law firm Tacopina, Seigel & DeOreo in New York. “The Law Offices of Tacopina Seigel & DeOreo has built a reputation as a law firm that tackles high-profile criminal and civil cases,” its website states. “We have proudly served our national and international clients for more than 20 years, and our distinguished attorneys have more than 70 years of combined legal experience.” Before becoming a criminal defence lawyer, Mr Tacopina was a prosecutor in Brooklyn. He was initially hired by Mr Trump in January of this year to defend him in the civil lawsuit filed by Ms Carroll. 1-800-Save-My-A** In March 2007, GQ Magazine published a piece entitled 1-800-Save-My-A**. The introduction states: “Suspected of murdering that blond girl in Aruba? Having some problems with your appointment as homeland-security chief? Made the mistake of having sex with Christie Brinkley’s husband? Call Joe Tacopina, the best-dressed, smoothest-talking, hardest-working criminal-defense attorney going, and for a mere $750 an hour, everything will be okay.” Mr Tacopina has five children with his wife Tish, The Post notes. ‘Most experienced American owner’ in Italian football In August 2021, he acquired the Italian Serie B – second-tier – football club Società Polisportiva Ars et Labor, also known as SPAL. In November of last year, Forbes wrote that he has spent “more than a decade as a top executive across four Italian soccer clubs,” and they called him the “most experienced American owner” in Italian football. What Tacopina has said about the hush money case Mr Tacopina criticised the indictment of Mr Trump, appearing on Fox News earlier this year saying that “I’ve never been more angry about a charge because today, the rule of law in the United States of America died. It’s dead. It’s dead”. Speaking about Mr Trump, he said, “he’s ready to fight. You know, he’s the toughest guy I know. He was shocked, you know, because we really weren’t — I was shocked”. Twitter user Acyn posted a clip of Mr Tacopina from 2018, in which he appears on a CNN panel discussion with Frank Bruni of The New York Times and CNN’s Laura Coates. Mr Tacopina appeared to say that alleged payments and subsequent falsification of records were an “illegal agreement”. “I mean, you know, once that net is out, once the microscope is on you, everything is fair game,” Mr Tacopina said on 14 March 2018, according to a CNN transcript. “And it’s hard to argue, ‘oh, you can’t look at this or you can’t look at that’. So, yes, if there’s an issue with that payment to Stormy Daniels being that it was made on behalf of the candidate. Okay. And it was not declared. That’s fair game. Unfortunately, if that’s the case.” “And you know, quite frankly, you know, Michael Cohen, again has made statements that would give rise to suspicion,” he added. “For any prosecutor to say that doesn’t make sense, that a lawyer took out a home equity loan with his own money, paid somebody that he didn’t even know on behalf of a client who, by the way, had the wherewithal and the money to afford $130,000. And, by the way, didn’t tell the client about the settlement agreement. It’s an illegal agreement. It’s a fraud, if that’s, in fact, the case.” “It doesn’t pass the straight-face test, and quite frankly, if that is what happened, we have a potential campaign finance issue,” he added. When reached by The Independent for comment, Mr Tacopina emphasized that twice during his 2018 appearance, he said, “if that is in fact the case”. “I was opining on a hypothetical that was posed by the host without [knowing] any of the facts. That is [why] I qualified my statements. The facts as I have now learned clearly show, that is NOT in fact the case,” he said in an email. “My mind hadn’t changed about the issue but what has changed is that I learned the facts,” he added. “My response was based on a hypothetical question … which is why I qualified my response TWICE,” he noted. The E Jean Carroll lawsuit Ms Carroll claims that Mr Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in 1995 or 1996 and that he later defamed her in 2019 as president when he rejected her allegation. As he began cross-examining Ms Carroll on 27 April, Mr Tacopina brought up a draft of her book What Do We Need Men For? in which she writes about the episode involving the former president. “You wrote that you thought Donald Trump was trying to kill you, to poison your water,” he said. “That’s a draft. That was not published,” Ms Carroll responded. On 8 May, Mr Tacopina said during closing arguments that Ms Carroll “became a star” after she went public with her story. In a podcast interview played for the jury, Ms Carroll said she got her “revenge” on Elle following her 2019 firing because she’s now more successful after becoming an independent Substack writer. Mr Tacopina went on to claim that Ms Carroll, and witnesses Lisa Birnbach, and Carol Martin “colluded” to create fake claims about Mr Trump. The attorney said both Ms Birnbach and Ms Martin testified that they didn’t tell anyone else about the incident. He added that Ms Martin didn’t bring it up on election night in 2016. Mr Tacopina told the jury that she didn’t say “Oh, my God. He’s going to win. He raped my friend,” according to Law & Crime. The attorney went on to mock Ms Birnbach for testifying that she wasn’t thinking about the alleged rape on election night 2016. “I wasn’t thinking about it,” she said. Mr Tacopina said there’s “no way that’s truthful testimony”. Kings County prosecutor Mr Tacopina attended Bridgeport Law School, which is now called Quinnipiac University School of Law, located in North Haven, Connecticut. Before entering private practice, he was a prosecutor at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office. A rapper, a baseball star, a state senator, and a long line of New York City cops Meek Mill was sent to jail in 2008 on charges relating to gun and drug violations. The rapper was convicted in 2017 for violating his probation. Mr Tacopina was able to get him out after five months. In January, the rapper was pardoned by the outgoing governor of Pennsylvania, Democrat Tom Wolf. Mr Tacopina represented baseball star Alex Rodriguez in the appeal of his 2014 suspension after he tested positive for human growth hormones and testosterone. The attorney has also represented several New York police officers. New York Democratic state Senator Hiram Monserrate faced charges of felony assault in 2009 following allegations that he dragged his girlfriend down a hallway, but Mr Tacopina helped him get acquitted.

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Donald Trump’s criminal trial over a stash of White House documents recovered from his home in an FBI raid may not take place until November. That was the request that Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith filed late Friday evening with Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the prosecution of the former president. ABC News first reported the filing, which cites the need for prosecutorial staff to obtain security clearances as one of the key reasons for their requested delay past the original trial date in August. A second motion requests that Ms Cannon prevent the release of a list of witnesses for the trial whom the Justice Department will seek Mr Trump be barred from contacting. Among other crimes, the ex-president is also charged with witness tampering, and has been ordered not to be in contact with one of his close aides: Walt Nauta. The development means that any trial will likely begin after at least the initial GOP primary debate this summer and could very well continue through voting in early primary states next year. Mr Trump has plead not guilty to all 37 counts, and loudly decried what he calls a witch hunt against him. But senior officials from his own administration have undercut that defence, unwilling to propagate the fantasy that Mr Trump had the authority to retain classified documents that pertained to national defence or the nonsense theory that the trove is somehow comparable to much smaller batches of presidential records recovered (without resistance, unlike in Mr Trump’s case) from the homes of Mike Pence and Joe Biden. His allies have claimed without evidence that the Justice Department is coordinating with the White House on the case, and have held strong to the idea that their leader did nothing wrong. But new evidence obtained by news outlets indicates that Mr Trump even spoke to reporters about a document in his possession which he verbally acknowledged was still classified. Mr Smith’s case exploded into view last year with the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago; now, it is one of more than a half dozen criminal and civil legal fights bearing down on the former president. Aside from being accused of violating the Espionage Act with his trove of (allegedly) stolen documents, Mr Trump is also accused of 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York; in addition, the actions of the ex-president and his legal team are thought to be at the centre of a grand jury investigation in Georgia over the efforts to change the election results in that state. Read More Trump claims he ‘doesn’t want any help’ fighting federal indictment after he struggled to find attorneys willing to represent him Trump calls on Congress to help him wriggle out of federal charges Fox News’s Bret Baier hits back at Trump conspiracy theorist after ex-president appears to incriminate himself in interview New recordings of Trump revealed in classified papers investigation, documents show ‘I’m very proud of my son’: Joe Biden defends son Hunter Biden after deal with DoJ to plead guilty to federal charges Democrats downplay Hunter Biden's plea deal, while Republicans see opportunity to deflect from Trump

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