President Donald Trumps former defense lawyer received swift backing from conservative legal figures online after facing pushback at a recent American Bar Association (ABA) conference for praising the Trump .
Attorney John Lauro, who defended Trump in special counsel Jack Smiths 2020 election case, said the DOJ was “in a better place” under Trump, causing fellow panelists and audience members to shudder, according to a Bloomberg Law report of the event.Â
Lauro told Fox News Digital in a brief phone call on Monday that the event “was a highly triggered environment.”
“I called out the ABA and other elite legal organizations for not condemning the prior administration in holding political sham trials and show trials, particularly the one directed at President Trump, where the Biden administration wanted to put him on trial in 90 days, which is shorter than it takes for a traffic ticket to get worked through in D.C.,” Lauro said.
The tense panel put a spotlight on the Trump administrations ongoing fight with the ABA as it spurred DOJ officials and lawyers to voice their disdain for the organization.
“The ABA is trash and Im proud to never have been a member,” Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon said. “Its stunt trashing Judge [Robert] Bork did it for me.”
“As if we needed anymore proof of the absolute disgrace that is the ABA,” wrote Associate Deputy Attorney General Diego Pestana. “John Lauro, one of the best trial attorneys in the country and patriot, treated terribly for simply daring to voice a view contrary to the liberal white collar bar.”
Lauro said during the panel, held at a conference in San Diego, that he had “the unique experience of representing a political figure who was probably more abused by the criminal justice system in America than any other political figure ever.”
“Everything that has gone on in the current administration must be looked at from the eyes of a man who was victimized by the criminal justice system,” Lauro said.
Among those rallying behind Lauro was also Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan, who said the ABA “represents a hyperpartisan faction.”
“That’s fine! But they should play no role in law school accreditation (or judicial selection),” Wessan said.
Former DOJ official Jeff Clark, an un-indicted co-conspirator in the 2020 election case, called Lauro “a bold man of principle.”
Another social media user, an anonymous Georgia-based legal commentator, said that while he disagreed with Lauro’s comments, he was “jealous” that Lauro “had the opportunity to tell a room of the type of haughty, effete defense lawyers who hang around at ABA conferences to go f— themselves. He should have taken it.”
Lauro’s remarks had elicited pushback from participants. Nancy Gertner, a Harvard University law professor and retired federal judge, responded that any issues surrounding Trump’s prosecutions did not “justify the fracture of American democracy.”
Former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner said: “I wanted to thank Mr. Lauro for admitting the emperor has no clothes. The rule of law is dead because the people in this room and the Department of J
