NBA player Terry Rozier’s defense in the Department of Justice‘s “Operation Nothing But Bet” now rests in the hands of James M. Trusty, a former federal prosecutor who rose to national prominence in 2022 when he signed on to represent President Donald Trump against federal investigations into Jan. 6 and the handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Trusty joined Trump’s legal team at a time when the former president was reportedly struggling to secure counsel willing to take on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution. According to the The New York Times, Trump tapped Trusty after seeing him on cable TV, where the lawyer had been vociferously defending the president against both the investigations by the DOJ and the Manhattan district attorney, whose case against Trump he once described as a “rancid ham sandwich.”
In many ways, Trusty is reprising a similar role now in defending Rozier, calling into question the motivations of prosecutors. During his tenure representing Trump—both against federal charges and in a civil defamation lawsuit against CNN—Trusty positioned himself as a combative critic of prosecutorial overreach. However, in June 2023, Trusty withdrew from Trump’s legal team just hours after a Trump aide had been indicted in the documents case. A month later, he bailed on Trump’s CNN defamation suit, telling the court that he was withdrawing “based upon irreconcilable differences” with his client.
Nevertheless, Trusty continued to defend Trump in the public arena—particularly on cable news—and in Congress, where he appeared as a witness before a House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
“Even after leaving the Department of Justice, I worried that I would miss the moral clarity of prosecution and that I might struggle to represent a client, rather than simply following my conscience,” Trusty testified last year. “I had also come to realize over the years that there were people attracted to prosecution for the wrong reasons—ego, political ambition, power, self-righteousness—but I considered them a small minority at most, a rare exception that felt more accurate.”
However, through his defense of Trump, Trusty argued he had seen a “seismic shift in the criminal justice system.”
Following Rozier’s arrest last week, Trusty struck a similar note of suspicion, denouncing what he called the FBI’s “misplaced glory of embarrassing a professional athlete with a perp walk.” He added: “That tells you a lot about the motivations in this case.”
The politics of Trusty’s client advocacy work is more complicated this time. The FBI now operates under the aegis of Trump and the case against Rozier and his co-defendants is one the administration appears eager to highlight. FBI Director Kash Patel appeared at last week’s news conference in New York to announce the arrests, and Trump himself, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, remarked, “I think it’s very bad,” referring to the alleged conduct.
In a TruthSocial post Sunday, Trump tried to rhetorically tie the NBA’s unfolding gambling scandal—which includes last week’s arrests of Portland Trailblazers coach Chauncey Billups and ex-NBA player Jontay Porter—with his ongoing, unsubstantiated claims that Democrats “rigged” the 2020 presidential election.
(Last week, after ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith speculated that the arrests of Rozier and Billups might be political payback for the NBA’s past activism, Patel told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, “That may be the single dumbest thing I’ve heard out of anyone in modern history—and I live most of my time in Washington, D.C.”)
Trusty, meanwhile, launched a lobbying firm earlier this year, NexusOne Consulting, that touts its access to the Trump White House as a means of helping AI and crypto companies. The firm’s website prominently displays a photo of Trusty with Trump.
Trusty did not respond to a request for comment emailed to him by Sportico.
He is not the first former Trump lawyer to be retained by an NBA player in a bind. As Sportico previously reported, John Lauro, another attorney who represented Trump in his criminal matters, was retained by Josh Jackson, the former No. 4 pick in the 2017 NBA Draft, in his civil defense against a woman who accused him of sexual assault. Lauro, himself a former federal prosecutor, previously represented former NBA official Tim Donaghy, who was charged with betting on league games and accepting bribes to influence his calls.
According to an indictment filed Oct. 16 and unsealed last week, Rozier, currently a (suspended) member of the Miami Heat, is accused of participating in a fraudulent sports betting scheme that included his feigning injury during a March 23, 2023, game while playing for the Charlotte Hornets.
Prosecutors allege that Rozier exited the first quarter of the game as part of a plan in which his co-defendant and childhood friend, Deniro Laster, a childhood friend, sold advance knowledge of the move to other conspirators—including gambling influencers Marvis Fairley and Shane Hennen—who then placed large “under” bets on Rozier’s performance. After those bets paid off, the government claims, Laster collected tens of thousands of dollars from Fairley and Hennen and shared a portion of that back with Rozier.
In an interview Saturday with NewsNation, Trusty recalled having reached out to federal prosecutors months before Rozier was indicted, at which point he says he was told this client was not a “target” of an investigation.
“Process can tell you something about substance,” Trusty said. “At 6 a.m., they tell me we are arresting him in Orlando right now. First communication in months: That’s a bad sign. There is no reason to treat him differently that way.”
Trusty worked for the Department of Justice for 17 years, initially as an assistant U.S. Attorney in Maryland. In 2010, he became chief of the DOJ’s Organized Crime & Gang Section until leaving in 2017 to join Ifrah Law, whose founder member, Jeff Ifrah, is known for his work in gaming law. Ifrah is also the founding partner of NexusOne.
For Rozier, Trusty’s ties to Trump could complicate the defense, or help it. The lawyer could press ahead with claims of prosecutorial overreach, even at the risk of implying that Trump’s Department of Justice is no fairer than Joe Biden’s. Alternatively, he could try to leverage his connections, both at DOJ and with someone even more powerful, to spare his client.