« Mr. Trump is in great hands » with John Lauro as his attorney on the Jan. 6 indictment, Tim Donaghy told The Washington Post.
In the years before he represented Donald Trump on charges that the former president conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election, John Lauro would say that his most successful cases were the ones that didn’t get a lot of attention.
Whether it was a Wall Street businessman accused of working with the mafia or a diner who didn’t pay a $46 bill because he was unhappy with the amount of seafood on his pasta, the Florida attorney’s goal was to work quietly to get his clients “in and out as quickly as possible without any publicity,” he told the Tampa Bay Times in 2007.
But when Lauro represented Tim Donaghy — the disgraced NBA referee who admitted to betting on games he officiated and taking payoffs from bookies — the high-profile case marked a departure from the attorney’s quick-and-quiet approach. He became more publicly combative against the NBA and prosecutors who accused previously criticized him of overstating his claims in defense of Donaghy.
Donaghy, who was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in the gambling scandal in 2008, told The on Friday that he believed Trump had made the right decision by hiring Lauro, saying the lawyer helped save his life.
“Mr. Trump is in great hands having John on his side, because he’s going to fight tirelessly on his behalf,” said Donaghy, 56. “I 100 percent think that as long as John has the law on his side, there is going to be a way to for him to figure out how he can help former president Trump and get him in the position he needs and wants to be.”
Trump, the leading Republican contender in the 2024 presidential race, pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election, appearing in the federal courthouse located blocks away from where his angry supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to keep him in power on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump, who later described the proceedings as “a very sad day for America,” has been charged with conspiring to block Congress from confirming Joe Biden’s election, and successfully obstructing the vote confirmation by directing his supporters to the Capitol. He is also accused of scheming to disrupt the election process and deprive Americans of their right to have their votes counted.
