Sullivan & Cromwell co-chair Bob Giuffra is working his way up the MAGA hierarchy. Yesterday, he was spotted by Business Insider’s Jacob Shamsian at the Second Circuit argument in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case where the president’s lawyers were arguing that presidential immunity should invalidate the $83.3 million jury verdict against their client for defamation. At the argument, Giuffra was seen with Boris Epshteyn, the controversial personal attorney of Donald Trump.
Now Giuffra *does* represent the president — Sullivan & Cromwell is handling Trump’s appeal of his hush money conviction. Though that is… not this case.
This left a lot of observers wondering: what the hell was Giuffra doing there?
Giuffra’s time is very valuable — down to the 6 minute interval — so he’s getting *something* out of the appearance. Some useful networking perhaps? It’s not that he needs to hear the argument, yes presidential immunity is also an issue in Giuffra’s case, but the oral arguments are available online. If “keeping abreast of developments in presidential immunity jurisprudence” was all Giuffra cared about, he could tune in online and save himself the travel time (on one of the hottest days of the year, no less).
But I have to wonder just how this schmoozing is going down at S&C. There was a lot of internal turmoil when Giuffra announced the representation. Representing an adjudicated sex pest, with a history of dictating a brash (and not very S&C-like) litigation strategy (and then stiffing his lawyers to boot!) had a real way of draining morale. The everyone-deserves-a-criminal-defense argument wears pretty thin when Giuffra is showing up for funsies in a civil case where the judge had to repeatedly clarify that the trial “conclusively establish[ed] that Mr. Trump did, forcibly and without her consent, penetrate Ms. Carroll’s vagina with his fingers.”
Unsavory for a White Shoe firm doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].
