Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at Ted Hendricks Stadium in Hialeah, Florida, U.S. November 8, 2023.
Octavio Jones | Reuters
A New York federal judge on Thursday rejected — for now, at least — a request by a law firm to withdraw from representing the presidential campaign of Donald Trump in a discrimination lawsuit by former 2016 campaign advisor Arlene “A.J.” Delgado.
But Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker gave the law firm — LaRocca, Hornik, Greenberg, Kittredge, Carlin & McPartland — until Tuesday to submit to her “a more detailed explanation” of its argument that a breakdown of its relationship with the Trump campaign required the firm to withdraw from representing it in the case.
Parker’s ruling came a day after she held a closed-door meeting with lawyers from the firm and with their clients to discuss the withdrawal request.
“In this case, defense counsel’s declaration is insufficient to grant withdrawal at this time,” Parker wrote in her order Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. “By May 7, 2024, defense counsel shall submit a more detailed declaration setting forth the basis for the deterioration in the attorney-client relationship sufficient for the Court to evaluate the motion.”
LaRocca, Hornik in a court filing last week told the judge that there had been “an irreparable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship between the Firm and the Campaign.”
The filing did not reveal what led to that breakdown.
Delgado opposed the withdrawal request.
Delgado’s suit claims that he was stripped of her responsibilities as advisor and director of Hispanic outreach for Trump’s campaign in late 2016, and prevented from taking an expected job in the White House, after she told campaign officials that she was pregnant by senior Trump campaign advisor Jason Miller.
The suit alleges the defendants reneged on an agreement in 2017 to privately settle her complaint for an undisclosed amount of money.
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