Daniels’ communications with Tacopina and others at his firm include details relating to Daniels’ situation, according to her current attorney Clark Brewster, who believes the communications show a disclosure of confidential information from Daniels.
Tacopina denies that there is a conflict or that confidential information was shared with his office. He says he neither met nor spoke to Daniels.
CNN has not seen the records in question. But legal ethics experts CNN spoke with said they could lead to limits being placed on the role Tacopina can play at trial or even his disqualification. The impact that the disclosure will have on the case will depend on the circumstances and the substance of the communications, the ethics experts said.
The scrutiny of Daniels’ alleged interactions with Tacopina and his firm, however, underscore how the Trump team is already being thrown curveballs in how they approach the yearslong investigation even before any charges against Trump have been formally brought.
While there have been signs that the investigation is wrapping up and that preparations are being made for an indictment, it is not clear yet that Trump will be charged or when those charges would be unveiled.
Brewster told CNN he handed the Daniels’ communications over to prosecutors after seeing Tacopina make public statements that Brewster believes were contrary to what’s evident in Tacopina’s and his firms’ emails with Daniels.
It would ultimately be up to a judge to decide whether the communications amount to a conflict of interest that requires disqualification or some other limitation on the advocacy Tacopina can do on behalf of the former president, if a case is brought against Trump.
A 2018 television interview that Tacopina did with CNN’s Don Lemon resurfaced in recent days, in which Tacopina suggested he may have been in contact with Daniels before she found another attorney in the hush money matter, which at the time was the focus of a federal investigation.
“I can’t really talk about my impressions or any conversations we’d had because there is an attorney-client privilege that attaches even to a consultation,” Tacopina said in the 2018 interview. As the old interview clip began making the rounds again, Tacopina’s firm issued a statement this weekend that said “there was no attorney-client relationship” — a point Tacopina stands by today.
On Tuesday, Tacopina told CNN that his 2018 interview comments “lacked clarity” and he said that he referenced an attorney-client privilege in the TV appearance “to terminate the inquiry, because someone on Stormy Daniel’s behalf did ask whether I would represent her, and I did not wish to discuss the matter on television.”
“However, those circumstances do not give rise to an attorney-client relationship in any form,” Tacopina said Tuesday.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
CNN’s Kara Scannell and Paula Reid contributed to this report.
