'Smeared with humiliation': Columnist calls out 'grifter' lawyers who 'tarnished their profession' for Trump

The recent wave of guilty pleas from members of former President Donald Trump's legal team is a stain not just on those individuals, but on the legal profession itself, according to a member of the New York Times editorial board.

In a column published Friday entitled "Trump's Lawyers Should Have Known Better," the Times' Jesse Wegman argued that the legal world has been shaken to its very foundations by the sheer number of lawyers involved in a crime as serious as attempting to overturn the will of voters in a lawful election. Wegman likened Trump's attorneys — in particular, the three who recently pleaded guilty in Fulton County District Court — to those involved in the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration.

"The charges in the plea agreements vary, but the underlying story is the same: Fifty years after Watergate, the nation is once again confronted with a president who grossly abused the powers of his office, leading to criminal prosecutions. And once again, that abuse relied heavily on the involvement of lawyers," Wegman wrote. "If Mr. Trump’s 2020 racket was 'a coup in search of a legal theory,' as one federal judge put it, these lawyers provided the theory, and the phony facts to back it up. In doing so, they severely tarnished their profession."

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Wegman posited that it was "disturbing" that so many lawyers — some with highly prestigious backgrounds and credentials, like former Chapman University law school dean John Eastman and former United States Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark — could get roped into a scheme to "help a con man stay in the White House against the will of the American people." Wegman theorized that the "eternal seduction of money and power" proved too strong, resulting in the former president's lawyers succumbing to "intense pressure to satisfy the demands of powerful clients, even if it means bringing lawsuits so frivolous that they can result in legal sanctions."

Of course, Wegman noted that this wasn't the case with other attorneys who performed sloppy work in the courts on Trump's behalf.

"Many of the lawyers caught up in Mr. Trump’s outrageous plot were not what you might call the cream of the crop," he wrote. "They were grifters, shysters, hair-dye-leakers, tapped primarily because Mr. Trump had trouble finding more serious people to make his case."

"In the end, they were all smeared with the humiliation of having filed meritless, fact-free cases. With one minor exception, federal and state courts rejected every lawsuit brought on behalf of Mr. Trump," he added.

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Click here to read Wegman's column in its entirety.