There was confusion Thursday over the status of a lawyer for Rick Gates, the Trump campaign staffer under indictment in the Mueller probe alongside Paul Manafort: The Daily Beast reported Thursday that attorney Tom Green had been fired; Green called the story “BS” and “Unbelievable” in a brief email to TPM.
The Daily Beast reported Thursday that Gates had fired his lawyer, Tom Green of D. C. firm Sidley Austin. But as soon as the story broke, Green submitted a court filing saying he would appear in court on Gates’s behalf. By email, Green denied the “BS story.”
Betsy Woodruff, the reporter who wrote the Daily Beast story, said on Twitter that she stood by the piece.
My reporting is correct. It may take a day or two for Green's formal relationship with Gates to legally unravel. But he's out. https://t.co/QJuh9qnCAd
— Betsy Woodruff (@woodruffbets) February 22, 2018
TPM has contacted multiple representatives for Gates requesting clarification.
Gates also submitted a second motion saying he did not oppose Gates’s old legal team leaving the case, as they’d indicated they wanted to do earlier this month.
Green has been with the team less than a month. Three more of Gates’s attorneys have said they want to quit: Shanlon Wu, Walter Mack and Annemarie McAvoy, filed a motion earlier in February to withdraw “immediately” from representing him, citing “irreconcilable differences.” The three lawyers appear to remain on Gates’ team.
Moreover, the initial report states that Gates won’t sign a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller as previously reported.
The confusion comes at a bad time for the defense: Also on Thursday, Mueller filed a superseding indictment adding charges of money laundering and tax evasion to the laundry list of financial crimes with which Gates and Manafort are charged.
The pair were indicted in December on charges including conspiracy against the United States and failure to register as foreign agents during their lobbying work for the pro-Russian Party of Regions in Ukraine. Though few are prosecuted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the list of violations of the act in the indictment is extensive.
Mueller-palooza rolls on unabated…
So Green got on the record as his attorney finally and now he’s fired.
What the fuck is going on with Gates I wonder.
Must think he has a Trump Card for a pardon. I sure hope there a lot of associated state charges tied into all of this…
Yeah me too.
The lawyers are running from him like he was radioactive. I find it rather extraordinary.
I know he fired Green but there has to be something going on with him that he keeps going through different representation. And his first set of lawyers really wanted off the record badly.
I’m thinking he’s firing lawyers until he can find someone who’ll tell him what he wants to hear. Everyone keeps telling him to cooperate or die in prison, and he keeps telling them he can beat the charge in court. He’s Hanover Fist, he’s got an angle.