Contingency Lawyer/Medieval Historian is Trump's New Lead Counsel - By Josh Marshall
By Josh Marshall | March 29, 2018 1:37 am
Today we learned that Donald Trump’s erstwhile lead Russia lawyer, John Dowd, was likely forced to step down rather opting to pursue new opportunities in the law, as originally claimed. That got me curious about Andrew J. Ekonomou, who is now apparently Trump’s new lead attorney since Dowd’s departure. Ekonomou does not appear to have ever worked at a major national law firm, ever worked in Washington, DC or even worked as a defense lawyer. What first attracted my attention was that in addition to being an attorney, Ekonomou is also a medieval historian who writes about the early medieval papacy and the Byzantine empire. As a lapsed PhD myself I thought, if nothing else, this is a great story of PhDs finding alternative career tracks outside the academy!
But Ekonomou’s story actually gets so much better.
Andrew Ekonomou got his bachelor’s degree from Emory University in 1970 and his law degree, also from Emory, in 1974. It was what Ekonomou described to Reuters as a “mid-life crisis” that sent him back to Emory in the 1990s to become a medievalist. He earned his doctorate in 2000.
Since then Ekonomou appears to have mixed history writing with life as a semi-retired or perhaps three-quarters’ time lawyer, doing murder prosecutions on contract for Glynn County DA Jackie Johnson and civil forfeiture work for DAs around his home state of Georgia.
His law firm, Ekonomou Atkinson & Lambros, actually specializes in bringing civil and criminal forfeiture proceedings against convenience store owners accused of running video poker machines. He even does the occasional gig acting as a receiver for this or that business on the skids. He covers a lot of ground. He and law partner, Michael Lambros, even managed to get involved in a reasonably high profile scandal, which we’ll get to in a moment.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/contingency-lawyer-medieval-historian-is-trumps-new-lead-counsel
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He's hoping Charlemagne will offer him a full pardon and the keys to the gates of heaven.
If that's his angle, he's picked the perfect lawyer for the job.
A low-buck, small-town shyster who specialized in civil and criminal forfeiture proceedings against convenience store owners running video poker machines, taking a percentage of the forfeiture. Actually, Saul Goodman probably would be a step up.
he's like a good A ball shortstop asked to pitch game 7 of the World Series.
