Top former Donald Trump aides face crushing legal bills. They confront a mass of criminal and civil actions. This includes former Trump aide Steve Bannon, former Trump lawyer and New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, and MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell. They have all had lawyers abandon them due to unpaid bills.
They face the legal consequences of their exaggerations and misrepresentations in the wake of the 2020 election. Bannon faces an appeal in the coming month of his conviction for refusing to honor a subpoena from the January 6th Committee and its investigation of the Capitol riot.
“Even though Judge [Carl] Nichols said Bannon’s appeal was serious, it is not. Bannon has almost no chance of overturning his conviction. He’s manifestly guilty,” former prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig told the Guardian.
Former prosecutors told The Guardian that Bannon is not likely to succeed in his appeal.
Giuliani faces 13 criminal counts from Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis, in connection with his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. Meanwhile, Lindell has dumped millions of dollars into a Minneapolis law firm in his effort to defend himself from a $2 billion lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems.
Bannon, Giuliani, and Lindell Face Millions in Legal Bills
The Minneapolis law firm formally requested to withdraw from representing Lindell this past month, citing the fact it was owed millions of dollars in legal fees. Attorney Robert Costello requested to withdraw from representing Guiliani and Bannon due to monies his firm was owed. Guiliani owed $1.4 million in fees, and Bannon owed $480,000.
A court judgment ordered Bannon to cough up the $480,000 in fees; however, he is fighting the judgment with the help of lawyer Harlan Protass. As for Giuliani, it remains to be seen how much he will repay Costello’s firm and when that will happen.
A source close to Giuliani faults former President Donald Trump for not coughing up the seven-figure amount to pay for his former attorney’s legal bills, not the former New York mayor. Trump allegedly agreed to pay his legal bills during a meeting earlier this year.
Giuliani Faces Uphill Climb in Georgia Thanks to Donald Trump
In the past two weeks, former Trump attorneys Kenneth Cheseboro, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis struck plea bargains that could impact Giuliani’s case as well as Trump’s.
“As expected, the dominoes have started to fall in Georgia with three plea agreements by key Trump lawyers who in different ways worked with Rudy,” Paul Pelletier, the ex-acting chief of the fraud section at the justice department, told the Guardian. “Rudy too may want to plead and cooperate to reduce his exposure, but no prosecutor in their right mind would use him as a cooperating witness. There’s simply no way to undo the entrenched legacy of his outlandish behavior.”
A Georgia judge found Giuliani liable for the defamation of two Georgia election workers in August for baselessly claiming that they manipulated the election results. He was required to pay tens of thousands in legal fees for the election workers in addition to the $100,000 fine that the judge previously imposed.
Donald Trump Faces $100M in Legal Fees
As for the former president, he has said he faces upward of $100 million in legal fees in the face of the avalanche of criminal charges and civil suits against him.
“It’s cost me a couple of billion dollars to be a politician. Everyone else makes, they make [money]. I said, ‘No, we can’t do that.’ I could have made a fortune. The countries are coming [and saying,] ‘We’d like to build a job and we’d like to have you involved.’ Billions. I say, I tell my kids, ‘Sorry, kids, we can’t do it. I’m president.’ I respected the office,” Trump said. “And of course, then they made it much worse with legal fees. I have $100 million worth of legal fees,” Trump said. “And they’re doing good. At least I have good lawyers, because you can spend $100 million and have lousy lawyers too. It happens.”
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
