One is known as a legal street brawler who takes his adversarial style on the airwaves. The other has a reputation as a brainiac tactician, famous for drilling into the detail of cases.
Together they make up the legal odd couple that will represent Donald Trump when he arrives to be arrested early on Tuesday morning in Manhattan.
Legal watchers say Joe Tacopina tracks most closely with Trump’s bombastic style.
‘Combative, media-obsessed and a willing consort to questionable characters—Donald J. Trump found a kindred spirit in the New York lawyer who will represent him in a historic criminal prosecution,’ began a profile written by Law360.
Susan Necheles may be a lesser known figure but she is just as familiar with running cases in the glare of the New York tabloid media and has a history of mounting unconventional defenses.
Joe Tacopina and Susan Necheles are both veterans of New York’s celebrity trial circuit. But while Tacopina is known as a streetfighter, Necheles brings a more academic approach
Supporters have been gathering near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, every day since he warned he was facing arrest two weeks ago. A grand jury indicted him Thursday
Both have been part of team Trump’s media push since a Manhattan grand jury on Thursday voted to indict the former president.
Although the charges remain sealed, the grand jury had been hearing evidence related to a $130,000 hush money payment made to adult movie star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
‘Let me make something very clear. Whether he did or didn’t have a relationship, or a one-night stand, even though he adamantly denies it … it doesn’t change the fact that that is not a crime,’ Tacopina told News Nations after details of the indictment emerged.
He is due to hit the television studios on Sunday, delivering a message that the charges will not stand up to serious scrutiny on the morning news shows.
Litigating in the spotlight is nothing new for him. He has represented rapper Meek Mill, Donald Trump Jr.’s fianceé Kimberly Guilfoyle before the House January 6 committee, and the former Yankees baseball star Alex Rodriguez.
He told Reuters before the indictment that he is unafraid of controversial cases and that he and Trump have a relationship of ‘mutual respect.’
One of his first tasks on Tuesday morning will be getting his high-profile client safely inside the Lower Manhattan courthouse.
On one famous occasion, that involved a body double. Rapper Sticky Fingaz wanted to avoid the waiting crowd so his driver donned a fedora and sunglasses before walking in to the main entrance with Tacopina, distracting the media while his actual client used a side entrance.
A grand jury has been hearing evidence about allegations that Donald Trump paid $130,000 to adult movie star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence over their affair
Tacopina took on the case of Meek Mill after he had been sentenced to up to four years in prison for parole violations. Mill was released after serving five months
That mix of cunning and bravado is the sort of thing that will appeal to Trump. And his colleagues say it helps him in the courtroom.
‘He has the unique ability to infuriate a judge and have the judge be charmed by him within a span of 10 minutes,’ a prosecutor told Politico.
Both lawyers have experience of other cases involving Trump. Tacopina is representing Trump in a defamation lawsuit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll after he denied her accusation that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.
And Necheles defended the Trump Orgnanization last year when it was accused of tax fraud.
She referred to ‘President Trump’ throughout but told the court she was not making a political point.
Necheles was counsel to the Genovese crime family underboss Venero Mangano, who was known as ‘Benny Eggs’ for the egg store run by his mother
‘My parents were immigrants and migrants,’ she said. ‘And in my home we referred to all former presidents as presidents out of respect for the office, whether we supported him, or disagreed with him.’
Like Tacopina, some of her cases have made for tabloid fodder. She served as counsel to the Genovese crime family underboss Venero Mangano, who was known as ‘Benny Eggs’ for the egg store run by his mother.
The Yale Law school graduate represented John Gotti’s lawyer, Bruce Cutler, in a contempt-of-court case in the early 1990s.
And more recently she defended liquor heiress Clare Bronfman in the NXIVM cult case.
In 2010, she made tabloid headlines when she deployed a ‘divine defense’ for a developer accused of conning Hasidic families in a subprime mortgage fraud.
Her client, she said, had received a blessing from a rabbi to build affordable housing.
‘It was a mitzvah to him, a Hebrew word that means a good deed and an obligation,’ she said in her opening statement.
