A lawyer who has advised President Trump in recent weeks has resigned from his law firm after it was revealed that she participated in a call in which Trump pressured Georgia officials to help him reverse state election results, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.
The lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, has advised Trump, despite a policy by his firm, Foley & Lardner, that none of his lawyers should represent clients involved in reactivating the presidential election.
“Cleta Mitchell informed the company’s management of its decision to resign from Foley & Lardner with immediate effect,” said the company in its statement. “Em. Mitchell concluded that his departure served the best interests of the company as well as his personal interests. We thank her for her contributions to the company and we wish her all the best.”
Ms. Mitchell’s resignation was the latest evidence of the problems that Trump created for law firms throughout his tenure, as his employees and clients are opposed to ties to the president.
In an email to her clients and friends, Ms. Mitchell blamed her departure for “a massive pressure campaign in the last few days set up by leftist groups via social media and other means against me, my law firm and clients from the office advocacy. ” She vowed to “redouble” her efforts in what she called “electoral integrity”.
The company began to distance itself from it shortly after the call was first reported by The Washington Post on Sunday. As Trump made increasingly specious statements about the election, he failed to attract high-profile lawyers to support his cause.
Mrs. Mitchell was among several Trump advisers who joined him on the conference call on Saturday, in which Trump vaguely threatened Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger with “a criminal offense” while pressing him to “find” enough votes to change state presidential results.
Ms. Mitchell has represented far-right and conservative groups for many years. She served on the board of the National Rifle Association and represented Tea Party groups that claimed they were illegally targeted by the IRS.
On Sunday, in the hours following Mitchell’s participation in the call, the anti-Trump group, the Lincoln Project, questioned on Twitter why clients like Major League Baseball were associated with a company that employed someone who sought to annul the election.
In Ms. Mitchell’s email to her clients and friends, she thanked Foley & Lardner for supporting her political practice “all these years, despite continuing attacks over the years against me, my clients and my work.”
“With the increasingly blatant attacks on conservatives and, more especially, anyone who supports and wants to help President Trump,” she wrote, “I realize that a large national law firm is no longer the right platform for me or my law firm. “
She repeated her baseless allegations of electoral fraud.
“Electoral integrity is something I have been passionate about for many, many years,” she added. “That was and remains my goal when trying to discover the truth about the election results in Georgia. Those who deny the existence of electoral and electoral fraud are not in contact with the facts and reality ”.
Since the first year of Mr. Trump’s administration, his disregard for rules, law and ethics have made it difficult for him to attract the best legal talent from established companies. During the special council’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s links to interference in the Russian elections, several companies told their top white-collar lawyers that if they wanted to represent the president, they would have to resign.