An hour after leaving the Manhattan federal courtroom where his appeal of a sexual abuse jury verdict was being heard, former President Trump appeared before cameras in the lobby of Trump Tower on Friday to slam the women who had accused him.
But they weren't his only targets.
Surrounded by six lawyers, the former president vacillated between public praise and criticism of them, reflecting the complicated dynamics of his legal team involved in a lawsuit brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.
“I'm sad that I have to come here and explain,” Trump said.
“I have legal talent, but I can't win against a corrupt judge, I can't win in a district that's 4 percent Republican,” he continued. “I'm disappointed in my legal talent, frankly. They're good people, good people, talented people.”
Friday's event marked Trump's most detailed public comments yet about the lawyers involved in the two civil lawsuits brought by Carroll, who accused Trump of sexual assault and defamation, after a jury awarded her a total of $93 million in damages.
After the first trial, Trump's lead lawyer was removed from the case.
“My lawyer who's not here is no longer with us,” Trump said Friday, referring to his lawyer, Joe Tacopina.
Trump also detailed his differences with Tacopina, including his long-standing frustration over his lawyers' advice not to appear in court.
“He said, 'You don't have to appear. I'll do it. You shouldn't do it. It's not appropriate for your job, it's not appropriate for the presidency,'” Trump said, striking the impression of a brash former lawyer with a reputation for representing high-profile clients.
“I didn't go to court because I understood what he meant,” Trump added, “and I was convicted of something I didn't do — against a woman I've never met, never touched or been involved in any way with, and never want to be involved with.”
A New York jury found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing Carroll while he was president and for later defaming her when she came forward with her allegations, and awarded him $5 million. Civil liability is different from a conviction, can only be handed down in a criminal case, and carries a much heavier burden.
But when a different jury awarded Trump $83.3 million in Carroll's second defamation lawsuit, the former president did not fire his lead lawyer.
In fact, lawyer Alina Habba stood behind Trump at Friday's press conference.
But her main focus right now is Trump's campaign.
“As a lawyer, as a woman and as a mother, you must vote again for Donald Trump because the future of this country depends on it,” Hubba said at a press conference on Friday.
She now serves as a senior adviser to the campaign as lawyers from the former president's criminal defense team lead the appeal of the Carroll case.
The team includes D. Jon Sauer and Will Scharf, who led Trump's successful immunity appeal before the Supreme Court, and lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, who represented Trump in three of his four criminal cases.
They all sat in on the former president's news conference, along with Trump's legal adviser, Boris Epshteyn, who frequently wrote memos to the lead lawyers in the recent trial.
No one from that group spoke except Schaaf, who recently lost a primary to Missouri's incumbent Republican attorney general.
Scharf delved into the details of the appeals court's oral arguments that took place earlier in the day, which focused primarily on whether certain evidence presented at first trial was improperly presented to the jury.
“This is outrageous,” Schaaf said. “This is a total abuse of our legal system, a total abuse of the rule of law. It's deeply repugnant not just to President Trump's political supporters, but to all Americans.”
