Former Trump Lawyer Says He'd 'Regret' Having Alina Habba as Attorney

Tim Parlatore, a one-time lawyer for Donald Trump, said in a Friday interview that he would "regret" having Alina Habba represent the former president as an attorney.

Habba has recently gained attention for representing Trump in the civil defamation trials brought against him by former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of defaming her when he repeatedly claimed she was lying about allegations that he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store changing room in the 1990s. Last year, a jury found him civilly liable for abusing Carroll and defaming her for comments he made in 2022, ordering him to pay $5 million in damages. On Friday, a jury ruled in another case based on comments he made in 2019, ordering Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages.

Trump has maintained his innocence throughout the proceedings, even after the first jury found him liable and precluded him from making such claims in future cases.

"Absolutely ridiculous! I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party," Trump wrote in part about the verdict on Truth Social, his social media platform.

Parlatore previously spent several years representing Trump across a number of cases, most notably in the Department of Justice's (DOJ) probes into the former president's attempted efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his mishandling of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort residence, both of which Trump has claimed innocence in. He departed the legal team last spring after long-running conflicts with other Trump allies.

During a Friday appearance on CNN, Parlatore was asked if Trump might regret retaining the services of Habba after the latest verdict, to which the lawyer said that he would regret it.

"Certainly, from my perspective, I would regret having her represent him," Parlatore told host Kaitlan Collins. "I do think in both of these trials, he was essentially undefended and I think that it could've turned out differently."

Newsweek reached out to Habba's office via email on Saturday afternoon for comment.

Also touched on were Habba's claims that Trump's ability to mount a defense in the second trial was hamstrung by claims they were not allowed to make in court, framing it as unfairness towards the former president. Parlatore, echoing other observers, said that was actually down to the verdict in the first trial, which carried over into subsequent cases and barred Trump from claiming in court that Carroll's accusations against him were false in any way.

"Unfortunately, because of how the first trial went, I don't think anyone could've won the second trial," Parlatore said Friday. "I think that once the issues were set up from the first trial, the second trial was a loser from the beginning. The question is how big of a loser...All of these things [Habba] did throughout the process, I don't think helps."