President Donald Trump’s biographer, Michael Wolff, flagged one of the most important lawyers who isn’t working anywhere in government, but still seems to be in the meetings.

In a new Substack post, the author and researcher explained that he is appealing his First Amendment suit against the first lady. One new detail in the case, he added, is that he believes the suit is actually being overseen by his team at the White House.

“This should not, perhaps, come as a particular surprise. But it offers another insight into Trump law, and Trump justice, and litigation as another arm of Trump’s command-and-control tactics,” wrote Wolff on Wednesday.

He promised that one day someone would write a book that would detail all of the ways that Trump has scored so many legal wins as a result of “guerrilla lawfare.” One of those key ways he’s done it is with one of his legal loyalists.

“This strategy for his personal, business, and, in the last decade, political life, is often credited to Roy Cohn. But really, it is a reflection of Trump’s own sense of constant combat and his belief that there is always an advantage to gain, that delay is as nearly good as victory, and that you don’t need to worry about the future if you live another day,” Wolff continued.

The move is having lawyers dedicated to his every legal whim, whether or not it’s respectful of a court’s rules or norms. At the Justice Department today, Wolff said, the staff is made up of “lawyers who have decided to sacrifice their careers for Trump.”

His personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, who has been nominated to be the attorney general, being the main one. But it extends to all assistant U.S. attorneys around the country as well as Trump-appointed judges, Wolff said.

Behind all of that, he said, is Boris Epshteyn, “a 43-year-old Russian émigré.” While he has run his own law practice for a few years, he’s been spending a lot of time at the White House lately, according to a new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

Behind the scenes, some of those in Trump’s inner circle see Epshteyn “as odd and suspect, someone always trying to get around them to get to Trump.”

While he briefly worked for the White House, he didn’t last more than a few weeks, but he’s remained in Trump’s good graces, “albeit with his name spelled wrong on Trump’s phone.” He became part of those trying to adjust the Arizona election results in 2020 and ultimately joined with Rudy Giuliani, coordinating efforts with state electors.

As Trump’s legal problems grew after leaving office, Wolff said that Epshteyn became “his key legal confidant,” often on the phone with him ten times a day.

“[Epshteyn is] hated by Trump’s staff, under constant threat (and constant media rumors) of his own indictment, caught on a police cam sitting in a gutter in Scottsdale, Arizona having been arrested for allegedly drunkenly pawing girls at the Bottled Blonde Pizzeria and Beer Garden,” wrote Wolff, adding that chief of staff Susie Wiles is an Epshteyn foe.

Epshteyn works solely for Trump, said Wolff. “Yet, even outside the White House, Epshteyn arguably holds the single most influential legal portfolio in Trump world, including an effective partnership with Blanche, now Trump’s nominee for Attorney General. Indeed, there is little in the Justice Department, or among the various federal prosecutors around the country, or involving Trump’s own vendettas, threats, and grievances, in which Epshteyn is not closely engaged.”

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The teal wave has been hailed as a welcome feature of our democracy. How refreshing to have a bevy of free-thinking, free-speaking independents (even if a couple are now forming a new party). But it has also contributed to the decline of a major “party of government” and, some would say, by extension and indirectly to the rise of One Nation. And that is bringing its costs.

This overlooks an important point. While the federal spending during COVID, judged in retrospect, was obviously more than needed, it kept a lot of people and businesses going. The Liberals might rightly want to distance themselves from Scott Morrison, but that government’s COVID record was far from as bad as now portrayed.

But another quick change of leader, to Andrew Hastie, wouldn’t necessarily help. Hastie came into parliament (at a 2015 byelection) only a couple of years after Taylor (2013) but he is less experienced in senior frontline positions.

The Liberals don’t know how to respond to One Nation. Hastie is adamant be won’t “bend the knee” to the insurgents. Some Liberals want accommodation. Taylor’s language varies, as he seeks to avoid offending One Nation supporters. “I never attacked One Nation voters, and I never would. I never will,” he said on Monday.

One time Florence bogged, opening up a sink hole. The second time she was wedged in rock.

When well prepared, Hastie can be a strong political performer, but he has been knocked around by the vicious attacks on him over giving evidence against Ben Roberts-Smith, the VC winner accused of five counts of the war crime of murder. Hastie’s political resilience – an incredibly important quality in politics – has yet to be tested.

Liberals are tossing overboard their past, like a sinking ship discarding ballast.

While the main attention has been on a drop in One Nation’s support (and Labor’s rise), the equally important message is what’s happening to the Coalition vote. In Newspoll it’s down a point to 17%. In Redbridge it’s fallen two points to 18%.

Then there is the “wedge”, or wedges, the Liberals face.

The Liberal Party reminds one of that cumbersome machine, nicknamed Florence, that became stuck (twice) in a tunnel in the Snowy 2.0 project.

They’ve tried the leadership switch, and that hasn’t worked. Angus Taylor gets into muddles (as he did last week over multiculturalism). He looks as though he’d rather be back on his farm than having to be out and about every day, everywhere, which is the brief for an opposition leader. He is not cutting through.

More generally, the Liberals are wedged between needing to attract back voters who have fled to One Nation but also small-l former Liberal voters who have backed the teals. That surely is an ideological and policy needle that defies threading.

The success of the teals in taking Liberal seats has been a major factor in the Liberals’ parlous position.

“That takes a lot of work inside the party to go back to our roots, and then to look at our messaging and our communications to the Australian public, because you can’t keep getting poll after poll saying that it’s diabolical out there and just ignore it.”

For any revival, the Liberals need to win back urban seats, but the teals are now substantially dug in.

Both problems beset the Liberals as two more polls published at the weekend document their strife.

Read more:
Two new polls show drop in support for One Nation and the Coalition

“I’m putting myself out on a limb a little bit,” McIntosh said. “I think it’s time for the Liberal party to rebrand itself. Some people think that we’re stuck in the past and our policies need to resonate with the Australia of today and the future. So I think it’d be a really good time for us to revisit our values. What we stand for and the way we project ourselves to Australians.

Anyway, if the Liberals changed leaders again soon and it didn’t work, what then? No obvious candidates would remain, although shadow treasurer Tim Wilson would see himself as an option.

Various desperate suggestions are being put forward. Frontbencher Melissa McIntosh, interviewed on Monday on Sky, which is having to change its name for licence reasons, suggested the Liberals should rebrand too.

The teals defeated a number of Liberal moderates. In Kooyong Monique Ryan took out a potential future leader, Josh Frydenberg. If Frydenberg had held Kooyong he would have likely become leader either after the 2022 election or the 2025 one.

Peter Dutton has of course been thoroughly trashed. Taylor is criticising the Liberals’ record in COVID. He said on Monday, “I think during COVID we allowed big government to become accepted […] we needed to come out of COVID with a strong plan to pare back on both spending and the role of government in people’s lives”.

For Liberals determined to look on the bright side, however, Florence eventually did get out of her predicament. A recent Snowy Hydro video “Catching up with Florence!” shows her moving. Taylor can only hope.

As they agonise about their situation, Taylor is putting forward what is more or less a classic Liberal economic agenda. Economics is traditionally the Liberals’ strong ground but their current messages are not suiting the mood of a disgruntled electorate. Not that voters listen to a leader many of them have written off.

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