BREAKING NEWS!

Trump is further beefing up his legal team in the E. Jean Carroll case with a second appellate lawyer, Will Scharf, who is also a candidate for Missouri AG. (Scharf moved to be admitted in SDNY for purposes of the case today.)

— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) March 7, 2024

Wait for it...

One day before Thanksgiving last year, not long after leaving his job as a federal prosecutor, Scharf had an 11-tweet thread go viral. "Things I learned working as an Assistant US Attorney prosecuting violent crimes in St. Louis, America's murder capital," the first tweet read.

The thread contained a handful of Scharf's takeaways from his time as a federal prosecutor that mirrored nationwide GOP talking points, including supporting police and cracking down on China's fentanyl exports.

(Yeah, you already know what's coming...)

"Scharf talks about things he's learned prosecuting violent crime and America's murder capital, but I'm not aware of a single murderer that he prosecuted in America's murder capital," this prosecutor said.

The assistant U.S. attorney, who asked the RFT not to print his name, stressed that Scharf is obviously a smart man who worked hard during his two years on the job. But when Scharf joined the prosecutor's office in 2020, his political ambitions were apparent from day one, and the perception that the job was merely a stepping stone for him rubbed some people the wrong way.

"He'd been a prosecutor for a little over five minutes and he's talking about Missouri AG," the assistant U.S. attorney says, adding that Scharf came into the job with no prosecutorial experience and mostly handled "getting your feet wet" type cases during his two-year tenure. 

It gets better:

Court records show that of the roughly 150 cases in which Scharf entered an appearance as an assistant U.S. attorney, a little more than half were for gun possession crimes, with “felon in possession of firearm” by far the most common charge. Another fifteen or so cases involved gun possession charges along with other crimes like drug trafficking.

The remaining cases were against people accused of robbery and kidnapping, dealing fentanyl or crack, or who had escaped from halfway houses. None of the cases Scharf prosecuted, much less made an appearance in, involved a murder charge. 

I will remind my gentle readers that your humble host handled on criminal appointment in federal court, a "felon in possession of firearm" case.  The "trial" lasted less than five minutes.  I could have prosecuted that case, and I have NO criminal, defense or prosecution, experience.

The assistant U.S. attorney who spoke to the RFT said that it's not necessarily uncommon for attorneys to come into the office with no prior prosecutorial experience, but they usually stick around for several years and gradually take on more complicated cases.

"Other prosecutors are not just checking the box, literally counting the days from the moment they get there to when they can leave," the former colleague says. He adds, "You'll never be able to convince me that he didn't plan on getting just over two years. So he can say 'years' instead of 'year.'"

And now he's "beefed up" Trump's appellate stable of lawyers?  Yeah, right.

I knew seasoned litigators (worked with them, I mean) who never tried a case on appeal.  That's a whole different practice.  I knew one litigator who took his case to the US Supreme Court, but that was rare.  Really large lawfirms have a separate group of lawyers who just work on appeals.  Most government firms (DOJ, state AG's) have the same.  It's a practice as arcane as bankruptcy.  You don't learn a lot about appellate work from trial work, aside from preserving your error so you can appeal.  Some trial lawyers do appellate work regularly, don't get me wrong.  But the appellate lawyers for a former POTUS should be more experienced than a guy who spent two years doing grunt work and probably appearing in court for more experienced lawyers.  This guy probably had lead on the possession of gun cases, and not much else.

He's a clown in a suit, IOW, who wants to upgrade his political cred by signing on to appeallate briefs for Trump.  This isn't "beefing up."  This is putting on a salami suit and stepping into the dog pound. 

And it doesn't add one thin dime to the fund Trump needs to stop execution of that judgement starting next week.  This is soy beef by-products, at best.