The 'elite' team protecting Trump keeps getting smaller and smaller

Donald Trump became the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes as a New York jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts.

President Donald Trump hired an "elite legal team" last year to represent him in ongoing civil and criminal cases, but now, per Politico, "all but one [member] is gone" as the team continues to shrink.

As Politico detailed in its Sunday report, Trump retained the services of Sullivan & Cromwell last year, and received services from a team that " included five of the firm’s partners, all of whom had clerked for Supreme Court justices and one of whom had served as acting solicitor general." Now, however, for one reason or another, that team has dwindled to one — but not always for reasons detrimental to the president.

"Since April, four of the five members of Trump’s defense team have exited the firm, either to rival shops or because the president elevated them to positions in his administration or the judiciary," the report explained. "That leaves Sullivan & Cromwell co-chair Robert Giuffra Jr. as the single partner responsible for leading Trump’s defense in a smattering of high-profile appeals, including an attempt to shed the president’s criminal conviction."

Giuffra and a "junior-level lawyer" were the only signatories from Sullivan & Cromwell "on a petition asking the Supreme Court to overturn an $83.3 million jury award resulting from a defamation lawsuit filed by the writer E. Jean Carroll." This petition reportedly sparked backlash amongst the rest of the staff at the firm.

The firm is also behind efforts to appeal and overturn Trump's felony "hush money" conviction in Manhattan, as well as the fraud conviction secured by New York Attorney General Letitia James against the Trump Organization. This caseload has reportedly led to plans to expand Trump's team at the firm, and soon.

"It would be unusual for Giuffra, who has a roster of major litigation clients as well as co-chair duties, to handle all three appeals on his own," Politico added. "A person familiar with the firm’s staffing, who was granted anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said Sullivan & Cromwell plans to add partners to Trump’s team in the next two weeks, by the time it is scheduled to file a brief in Trump’s appeal of the civil fraud case Aug. 26. It is due to file a brief in the appeal of Trump’s New York criminal conviction in October."

It added later: "[While] some lawyers who represented Trump in the past saw their reputations or careers damaged by their association with him, that isn’t the case for the four who left his team. Trump named Jamie McDonald, the former enforcement director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as the Manhattan U.S. attorney. McDonald started the job in late July after being appointed by the district’s judges. And Trump nominated Matthew Schwartz to a lifetime position as an appellate judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. He was confirmed by the Senate in mid-July. The others defected to a rival firm, Gibson Dunn. Jeff Wall, the former acting solicitor general, and Morgan Ratner, an experienced Supreme Court litigator, made the switch in April."

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