Attorney withdraws from election challenge lawsuit, saying Trump used him to ‘perpetrate a crime’

An attorney representing President Trump in one of his dozens of lawsuits challenging the 2020 election moved to withdraw from the case on Thursday, telling a federal court that the president used him to “perpetrate a crime.”

Philadelphia-based attorney Jerome Marcus asked the court to allow him to withdraw, citing concerns over Pennsylvania’s professional conduct standards for lawyers. 

Marcus wrote that “the client has used the lawyer’s services to perpetrate a crime and the client insists upon taking action that the lawyer considers repugnant and with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement.” 

Marcus did not immediately respond to a message seeking further comment.

The move comes a day after a large mob of Trump supporters, galvanized by the president himself, stormed the Capitol as lawmakers were certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s win. The riot left four people dead, including one woman who was fatally shot by police.

The incident came after months of Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election and a failed legal effort across several battleground states to overturn Biden’s victory.

The case Marcus was involved in was one of the earliest election challenges that Trump filed and one of the most short-lived. Submitted just two days after the election, it sought to halt the vote counting in Philadelphia, accusing elections officials of illegally excluding Trump’s poll watchers from observing the process.

A federal judge denied Trump’s motion for an emergency injunction on the same day that the lawsuit was filed.