A law firm that has long defended Donald Trump’s campaign and businesses from employment lawsuits has abruptly asked to withdraw from a yearslong case over what it calls an “irreparable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship.”

The firm — LaRocca, Hornik, Greenberg, Rosen, Kittridge, Carlin and McPartland — has represented Trump’s political operation in numerous suits dating to his first presidential run, helping secure several settlements and dismissals and billing nearly $3 million in the process.

AfriPrime Android Web View app on Amazon Adroid app store....  https://rb.gy/3xek46

But late Friday, it asked a federal magistrate judge to allow it to withdraw from a suit filed by a former campaign surrogate, A.J. Delgado, who says she was sidelined by the campaign in 2016 after revealing she was pregnant. The timing of the motion was notable, just two days after the same federal court had ordered the campaign to turn over in discovery all complaints of sexual harassment and gender or pregnancy discrimination from the 2016 and 2020 campaigns — materials that the defendants have long resisted handing over.

In the request, filed in federal court in Manhattan, the lead lawyer, Jared Blumetti, did not provide any details about the dispute, asking permission to “explain” the matter privately with the judge. Blumetti did not respond to a request for comment.

The apparent rupture with a long-trusted firm comes at a busy time, legally speaking, for the former president.

He is in the third week of a criminal trial in a 2016 campaign sex scandal cover-up case involving porn actor Stormy Daniels, and is facing additional criminal charges in Georgia as well as in two separate sets of federal indictments. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether Trump is absolutely immune from criminal charges for actions he took while in the White House. And he is appealing judgments totaling more than $500 million in two civil verdicts from last year.

It was not immediately clear whether LaRocca Hornik, which has its offices inside 40 Wall St., a building in downtown Manhattan that is owned by Trump, intends to cut all ties with him. But such a break would hardly be new. In January, one of Trump’s defense lawyers, Joe Tacopina, said he would no longer represent him. Last year, at least four of his other lawyers, representing him in a variety of civil and criminal cases, stepped aside.

Delgado, who is representing herself in the matter, objected to the withdrawal in a filing Monday, arguing it should not be allowed until the discovery process has been completed and calling the request a “scheme to avoid compliance.”

Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker said that LaRocca Hornik would have to continue to represent the campaign for the time being and that she would schedule a conference with the law firm and the campaign to discuss the matter.

The firm has represented Trump’s business interests for at least a decade, defending Trump Model Management in a wage case filed in 2014, for example. It also represented the campaign in both of Trump’s previous runs for the White House and was paid $1.8 million between September 2016 and December 2020, Federal Election Commission records show. Since then, the former president’s super political action committee, Make America Great Again Inc., has paid LaRocca Hornik an additional $990,000, including a payment of $15,103.90 as recently as March 25.

In addition to the case filed by Delgado, the firm is still representing the campaign in a sexual discrimination and abuse lawsuit filed by Jessica Denson, a former Hispanic outreach coordinator for the 2016 campaign. The most recent filing in that suit, in a New York state court, was made April 16 and makes no mention of a desire to end the legal relationship.

AfriPrime Android Web View app on Amazon Adroid app store....  https://rb.gy/3xek46

Last year, the firm helped the Trump campaign negotiate a $450,000 settlement in a separate lawsuit filed by Denson that challenged the validity of nondisclosure agreements that campaign workers were obliged to sign during the 2016 race.

And in 2022, it helped negotiate a settlement in a suit brought by protesters who claimed that Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller had in 2015 ripped up a sign that read “Trump: Make America Racist Again” and then hit one of them in the head.

Delgado brought her suit against the campaign, as well as against former advisers Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer, in 2019, claiming sex and pregnancy discrimination.

While working for the campaign, she became pregnant by her supervisor, Jason Miller, a senior communications adviser and spokesperson. When she revealed her pregnancy shortly after the 2016 election, her complaint said, she was relieved of most of her duties and “immediately and inexplicably stopped receiving emails and other communications.”

As part of the litigation, she has been seeking all other complaints of gender discrimination involving the campaign.

Trump trial updates: Judge fines Trump, threatens jail time for gag order violations as hush money testimony continues

 What happened today

In a written order handed down at the start of Tuesday’s court proceedings, Merchan announced fines of $1,000 each for nine posts made on Trump’s Truth Social feed that he said violated his gag order barring attacks on potential witnesses in the hush money trial. He also threatened to jail Trump for future violations and ordered him to remove the offending posts. As the testimony regarding Trump’s payment of $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels continued, the posts in question were deleted from Trump’s feed.

🔬 Zoom In

'Willful violations': Calling Trump’s explanation that he did not violate the gag order because was simply reposting messages about potential witnesses “counterintuitive and absurd,” Merchan handed down $9,000 in fines and made clear that his patience had run out. “The court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders,” Merchan wrote, adding that he was prepared to “impose an incarceratory sentence” [jail time] should Trump violate the gag order again. On the bright side for Trump, Merchan ruled that he could be excused from court to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation on Friday, May 17. Court will not be in session that day, Merchan said.

Let’s make a deal: Lawyer Keith Davidson, who represented former Playboy model Karen McDougal and Daniels in negotiations with the National Enquirer. Both women came forward to sell their story of an extramarital affair with Trump. Davidson’s testimony appeared to corroborate last week’s answers from former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker about the tabloid’s efforts to procure potentially damaging stories about Trump.

"I have a blockbuster trump story,” Davidson wrote in a text message to National Enquirer editor in chief Dylan Howard about McDougal's account. "Talk 1st thing. I will get you more than ANYONE for it,” Howard replied. Unbeknownst to Davidson, however, Pecker had entered into a catch or kill agreement with Trump to purchase and then bury possibly damaging stories during the 2016 presidential election.

But after the public release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump is heard boasting that his fame affords him the ability to sexually assault women with impunity, interest in Daniels’s story about an affair with Trump “reached a crescendo,” Davidson testified. "Trump is f***ed. Wave the white flag. It’s over people!” Davidson texted National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard. Cohen then sought to pay Daniels directly in order to buy her silence, and prosecutors showed jurors an email sent by Davidson to Cohen regarding the "settlement sum" of $130,000.

'Great level of frustration': Davidson testified that after reaching a deal with Cohen to pay Daniels, the money was not sent, causing him to send an email to Cohen’s address at the Trump Organization stating that Daniels was prepared to cancel the agreement.

"I think you can tell by these emails I was sending him there was a great level of frustration by me and my client," Davidson testified. "I let him know that the level of dissatisfaction was quite high. He [Cohen] stated, 'Goddamn it. I’ll just do it myself.'" While defense lawyers have already tried to portray Cohen as having acted on his own regarding the payment to Daniels, Davidson testified that he believed Cohen, who he often described in unflattering terms, was acting at Trump’s direction. "It was part of his identity and he let you know it, every opportunity he could, that he was working for Donald Trump,” Davidson said of Cohen.

AfriPrime Android Web View app on Amazon Adroid app store....  https://rb.gy/3xek46

More witness testimony: Prior to Davidson’s testimony, prosecutors finished questioning former First Republic banker Gary Farro about the limited liability company account he and Cohen opened that was used to pay Daniels $130,000. Prosecutors also called Robert Browning, executive director of C-SPAN’s archives, who testified about the veracity of some video clips featuring Trump, and Phillip Thompson, who worked at a company that documented Trump’s deposition in the civil defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

Full appeals court denies Trump motion to delay trial: On Tuesday, a full, five-judge panel of the New York Court of Appeals denied Trump’s request to delay the hush money trial on the grounds that Merchan had refused to recuse himself and to give Trump time appeal a lower court ruling that presidential immunity did not protect him from prosecution in the hush money case.

Trump’s Lawyers Want to Bail on His Sex Discrimination Suit

The firm that has repped ex-President Donald Trump and his campaign in multiple battles with high-profile women has asked a federal judge to let them abandon the embattled politician in a sex discrimination suit by a former female adviser—even if he and his team protest.

The firm, LaRocca, Hornik, Greenberg, Kittredge, Carlin & McPartland, unsuccessfully defended the former commander-in-chief against rape allegations by writer E. Jean Carroll and in the 2016 NDA case brought by one-time aide Jessica Denson. But on Friday the firm submitted a motion in Manhattan federal court to withdraw as his attorneys as yet another suit advances. The lawyers withheld details about why they wanted to pull out, except to say that their rapport with the campaign had suffered “an irreparable breakdown.

The firm asked to explain its exit request to the bench in private, and signaled that the campaign might fight to keep them onboard.

AfriPrime Android Web View app on Amazon Adroid app store....  https://rb.gy/3xek46

“The primary reason for the firm’s motion is due to an irreparable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship between the firm and the campaign,” Blumetti wrote in a declaration in support of the motion. “It is well-established that a breakdown in the attorney-client relationship is sufficient reason to permit withdrawal, even if the source of the breakdown is disputed and the client opposes the motion to withdraw.”

Neither Blumetti nor Patrick McPartland, whose names appear on the motion and have long fought on Trump’s behalf, responded to calls or emails for comment from The Daily Beast. Nor did the Trump campaign, which as of this writing has yet to object or accede to the motion.

But the request provoked outcry from the plaintiff in the case, first-run staffer Arlene “A.J.” Delgado, who has accused the operation of stripping her of her responsibilities after she revealed she had become pregnant. The father of her child is her former supervisor and Trump 2024 senior adviser Jason Miller, whom Delgado has also accused of raping her, a claim Miller has denied.

An attorney herself, Delgado joined the Trump campaign in August 2016 as a senior adviser and the director of Hispanic outreach. She claims in her lawsuit that Trump praised her as a “star” and said multiple times that he would hire her as a White House staffer if he won the 2016 election.

The lawsuit also alleges discrimination from three of Trump’s top lieutenants when he entered the White House— Stephen Bannon, Sean Spicer, and Reince Priebus—who she claims sidelined her once he came into office. She gave birth to the child in July 2017.

In her objection, Delgado—who is representing herself—wrote that the withdrawal motion “stinks to high heaven.” She noted that only two days prior, the judge in the case had granted one of her motions to compel disclosure of “information concerning gender-related complaints against the Campaign during the 2016 and 2020 campaign cycles, including complaints of sexual harassment, gender, or pregnancy discrimination.”

AfriPrime Android Web View app on Amazon Adroid app store....  https://rb.gy/3xek46

Delgado also highlighted that only days remain in the discovery process, and that the firm has not sought to sever from Trump in an ongoing case involving Denson in New York State.

“The firm cannot be permitted to the withdraw in the middle of compliance on a pending, imminently due, specific order,” Delgado asserted. “This is, as aforementioned, seeking to swap players on the field while a play is already in motion.”