Donald Trump’s attorney Alina Habba is no longer representing the former president in the E. Jean Caroll’s battery and defamation lawsuit, forcing Trump president to hire a high-profile criminal lawyer to represent him instead.
Citing court documents filed on Tuesday, Newsweek reported that “veteran New York lawyer Joe Tacopina has been brought in to work with the former president to fight the suit filed against him by the former Elle columnist.”
As noted by the publication, Carroll is suing Trump for sexual battery over allegations he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in New York in the 1990s. She is also suing the former president for defamation for comments he made while denying the assault, including stating “she’s not my type.”
The development comes after the former president, along with Habba, were both fined by a judge for filing “frivolous” lawsuits regarding the 2016 election.
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On January 19, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks ordered Habba and Trump to pay nearly $938,000 in legal costs to the dozens of defendants named in their dubious suits.
In his ruling, the judge scolded Habba, stating that “no reasonable lawyer” should have brought the case against Hillary Clinton as its “inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start.”
Trump’s civil trial over the sexual battery and defamation lawsuit brought against him by Carroll will begin in April.
