Zippyjuan
03-29-2018, 04:23 PM
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/andrew-ekonomou-donald-trump-legal-team
"Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case,” Donald Trump bragged on Twitter over the weekend. “Don’t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on.” Yet as with the vast majority of presidential tweets, this one coincided with a news cycle demonstrating just the opposite: hours later, the White House announced that attorneys Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing would no longer be joining the president’s legal defense. Trump has struggled to fill his rapidly shrinking bench since the departure of his lead personal attorney, John Dowd, last week—at least two lawyers, Tom Buchanan and Dan Webb, have turned down the job—necessitating the sudden promotion of a character as eccentric as he seems unqualified: former prosecutor and medieval historian Andrew Ekonomou.
Left running what has largely become a one-man show, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow announced this week that Ekonomou, who has worked on the Trump-Russia probe since June, will take on a more prominent role. Like much of the rest of the president’s legal team, however, Ekonomou lacks any experience relevant to the case. According to Reuters, he works under contract as an assistant district attorney in Brunswick, Georgia. He entered Trumpworld through his relationship with Sekulow, whom he worked with through Sekulow’s role as general counsel for conservative nonprofit the American Center for Law and Justice. (Sekulow has characterized Ekonomou as a “brilliant strategist.”) In his role, Ekonomou was apparently tasked with, among other things, dispatching a vaguely menacing letter to the son of a widow who became upset when Sekulow addressed an aggressive fund-raising request to her dead husband. (At the time, Sekulow said he was sorry and that the incident had been a “misunderstanding.”)
After studying law, Ekonomou suffered what he characterized as a “mid-life crisis” and returned to school to earn his doctorate in medieval history, with a minor in “Church History from Late Antiquity through the High Middle Ages”; he has since authored a book on Byzantine Rome and the Greek popes. Per Talking Points Memo, his law firm, Ekonomou Atkinson & Lambros, specializes in “bringing civil and criminal forfeiture proceedings against convenience store owners accused of running video poker machines.” Ekonomou and one of his partners ended up getting so rich off this line of work that they drew the attention of state authorities, who found they were working on contingency, earning a percentage of the assets from each store they busted. (Georgia passed a law in 2012 preventing such arrangements.
Arguably little in Trump’s legal team’s background prepares it for the task ahead—a fact that Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel under Barack Obama, told me should be deeply concerning to the president. “You wouldn’t go to an ear and nose and throat specialist to perform heart surgery,” he said. “It is an odd notion that you just reach out and recruit lawyers that you are personally comfortable with . . . rather than select the people that have the experience and the training to address the very specific problem that you face.” Ekonomou told Reuters that he “prosecutes a lot of murders for the D.A.” and “That’s basically it. Nothing earthshaking.” But when pressed, he dismissed the idea that he is out of his depth. “I’ve been tested plenty of times,” he said. “Just because you’re not a Beltway lawyer doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing.”
One thing Ekonomou may have going for him? A combative personality. Drew Ashby, a trial lawyer who previously worked for Ekonomou, told Reuters that he may jibe well with a president who notoriously ignores his lawyers’ advice. “He is a force of nature,” Ashby told the outlet. “Andy has the kind of presence and the kind of mind that I would think would make Donald Trump listen.” And with a potential interview with Mueller looming, Trump is fast running out of options. “Lawyers who care about their reputation don’t want to represent him,” William Jeffress, who worked on the Valerie Plame leak case, told me recently. “He will no doubt find a lawyer eager to represent him, but most lawyers are not.”
"Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case,” Donald Trump bragged on Twitter over the weekend. “Don’t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on.” Yet as with the vast majority of presidential tweets, this one coincided with a news cycle demonstrating just the opposite: hours later, the White House announced that attorneys Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing would no longer be joining the president’s legal defense. Trump has struggled to fill his rapidly shrinking bench since the departure of his lead personal attorney, John Dowd, last week—at least two lawyers, Tom Buchanan and Dan Webb, have turned down the job—necessitating the sudden promotion of a character as eccentric as he seems unqualified: former prosecutor and medieval historian Andrew Ekonomou.
Left running what has largely become a one-man show, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow announced this week that Ekonomou, who has worked on the Trump-Russia probe since June, will take on a more prominent role. Like much of the rest of the president’s legal team, however, Ekonomou lacks any experience relevant to the case. According to Reuters, he works under contract as an assistant district attorney in Brunswick, Georgia. He entered Trumpworld through his relationship with Sekulow, whom he worked with through Sekulow’s role as general counsel for conservative nonprofit the American Center for Law and Justice. (Sekulow has characterized Ekonomou as a “brilliant strategist.”) In his role, Ekonomou was apparently tasked with, among other things, dispatching a vaguely menacing letter to the son of a widow who became upset when Sekulow addressed an aggressive fund-raising request to her dead husband. (At the time, Sekulow said he was sorry and that the incident had been a “misunderstanding.”)
After studying law, Ekonomou suffered what he characterized as a “mid-life crisis” and returned to school to earn his doctorate in medieval history, with a minor in “Church History from Late Antiquity through the High Middle Ages”; he has since authored a book on Byzantine Rome and the Greek popes. Per Talking Points Memo, his law firm, Ekonomou Atkinson & Lambros, specializes in “bringing civil and criminal forfeiture proceedings against convenience store owners accused of running video poker machines.” Ekonomou and one of his partners ended up getting so rich off this line of work that they drew the attention of state authorities, who found they were working on contingency, earning a percentage of the assets from each store they busted. (Georgia passed a law in 2012 preventing such arrangements.
Arguably little in Trump’s legal team’s background prepares it for the task ahead—a fact that Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel under Barack Obama, told me should be deeply concerning to the president. “You wouldn’t go to an ear and nose and throat specialist to perform heart surgery,” he said. “It is an odd notion that you just reach out and recruit lawyers that you are personally comfortable with . . . rather than select the people that have the experience and the training to address the very specific problem that you face.” Ekonomou told Reuters that he “prosecutes a lot of murders for the D.A.” and “That’s basically it. Nothing earthshaking.” But when pressed, he dismissed the idea that he is out of his depth. “I’ve been tested plenty of times,” he said. “Just because you’re not a Beltway lawyer doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing.”
One thing Ekonomou may have going for him? A combative personality. Drew Ashby, a trial lawyer who previously worked for Ekonomou, told Reuters that he may jibe well with a president who notoriously ignores his lawyers’ advice. “He is a force of nature,” Ashby told the outlet. “Andy has the kind of presence and the kind of mind that I would think would make Donald Trump listen.” And with a potential interview with Mueller looming, Trump is fast running out of options. “Lawyers who care about their reputation don’t want to represent him,” William Jeffress, who worked on the Valerie Plame leak case, told me recently. “He will no doubt find a lawyer eager to represent him, but most lawyers are not.”