For some reason, President Trump appears to be having trouble hiring top lawyers to represent him in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of possible Russian collusion and obstruction of justice. Trump's trio of personal lawyers — John Dowd, Marc Kasowitz, and Jay Sekulow — is now down to Sekulow, but while the Trump team searches for new lead lawyer, Sekulow has promoted a little-known former federal prosecutor from Georgia named Andrew Ekonomou. Ekonomou, 69, worked with Sekulow on a high-profile religious liberties case in the 1980s, after serving as a prosecutor in the Atlanta U.S. attorney's office in the '70s and early '80s.
Now, Ekonomou works as a contract assistant district attorney for a private Atlanta firm, Lambros Firm LLC. He says he has been working on the Trump team since June, and both Sekulow and presidential attorney Ty Cobb say Ekonomou will assume a more prominent role after Dowd's departure. Ekonomou told Reuters on Tuesday that he "prosecutes a lot of murders for the DA," and his recent cases are "nothing earthshaking," but said he's "been tested plenty of times" and "just because you're not a Beltway lawyer doesn't mean you don't know what you're doing."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Why Rikers Island will no longer be under New York City's controlThe Explainer A 'remediation manager' has been appointed to run the infamous jail
-
California may pull health care from eligible undocumented migrantsIN THE SPOTLIGHT After pushing for universal health care for all Californians regardless of immigration status, Gov. Gavin Newsom's latest budget proposal backs away from a key campaign promise
-
Is Apple breaking up with Google?Today's Big Question Google is the default search engine in the Safari browser. The emergence of artificial intelligence could change that.
-
ABC News to pay $15M in Trump defamation suitSpeed Read The lawsuit stemmed from George Stephanopoulos' on-air assertion that Trump was found liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll
-
Judge blocks Louisiana 10 Commandments lawSpeed Read U.S. District Judge John deGravelles ruled that a law ordering schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms was unconstitutional
-
ATF finalizes rule to close 'gun show loophole'Speed Read Biden moves to expand background checks for gun buyers
-
Hong Kong passes tough new security lawSpeed Read It will allow the government to further suppress all forms of dissent
-
France enshrines abortion rights in constitutionspeed read It became the first country to make abortion a constitutional right
-
Texas executes man despite contested evidenceSpeed Read Texas rejected calls for a rehearing of Ivan Cantu's case amid recanted testimony and allegations of suppressed exculpatory evidence
-
Supreme Court wary of state social media regulationsSpeed Read A majority of justices appeared skeptical that Texas and Florida were lawfully protecting the free speech rights of users
-
Greece legalizes same-sex marriageSpeed Read Greece becomes the first Orthodox Christian country to enshrine marriage equality in law
