A$AP Rocky’s lawyer Joe Tacopina to represent Wendy Williams in her legal battle against guardianship

Lawyer Joe Tacopina, whose roster included high-profile clients like A$AP Rocky, Donald Trump, and Meek Mill, has reportedly been retained by Wendy Williams to help her in her legal fight against her court-ordered guardianship. Williams, who has been under guardianship since 2022, is now actively fighting against it with the help of online support and the #FreeWendy campaign.

In an interview with TMZ on April 3, 2025, Joe Tacopina said his first order of business as her personal attorney was to get her released from the New York facility where she is currently confined. The lawyer claimed the facility was not appropriate for someone of Williams' mental state, adding:

“She’s in a ward where people don’t know their names, where people don’t know between a red light and a green light. I mean, she’s in a place where people are a danger to themselves. She’s not. She can’t leave there on her own to go get a cup of coffee.”

Tacopina added that Wendy Williams is being "unjustly held" at the facility, claiming it was a "travesty of justice" for her to be confined at the wellness center. Williams had previously alleged that she was placed in a locked facility, unable to leave when she wished, and provided with a phone that could only make outgoing calls.

"The bottom line is, she needs to get out of there, and sooner rather than later. Every day she spends there is a travesty of justice,” Tacopina said.

Joe Tacopina recently represented A$AP Rocky during his gun assault trial in February 2025, where the Praise the Lord rapper was acquitted of his charges.

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Joe Tacopina is waiting for the judge to "approve" his entry into Wendy Williams' case

Speaking to TMZ on April 3, 2025, lawyer Joe Tacopina said that while Wendy Williams had retained him as her attorney, he was still waiting for the judge to approve his entry into the guardianship case.

“The judge has to approve any lawyer coming into the guardianship," he said.

Tacopina revealed that he had started filing motions to gain access to her case while also taking precautions on the off chance that he was barred from representing her.

He added that if the judge denied Wendy Williams' counsel of choice, he could either take an "interlocutory appeal" or follow Article 78, which meant suing the judge in a Supreme Court.

“If the judge, for some reason, doesn’t allow us into the guardianship matter as Wendy’s counsel of choice, which almost sounds ridiculous, but they could try and argue that she doesn’t have the wherewithal or the abilities to pick her own counsel, which is obviously silly," he said.

He continued:

"But if they did, we’d take an interlocutory appeal, or we could go as far as doing something called an Article 78, which is actually suing the judge in a Supreme Court in New York State.”

Tacopina also dismissed claims that Wendy Williams had frontotemporal dementia, which the television host was diagnosed with in 2023. According to a video by TMZ founder Harvey Levine in February 2025, Wendy Williams believed that she was misdiagnosed after her condition vastly improved in the months following her diagnosis, which was reportedly highly unlikely in the case of frontotemporal dementia.

According to Page Six, Wendy Williams also recently aced a "capacity test" she underwent in March 2025, scoring a 10 out of 10. A psychiatrist who examined her at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City also declared that her "mental capacity is fully intact."

The test came after the television host was seen throwing a paper that read, "Help! Wendy" from her fifth-floor room at the New York facility to paparazzi, prompting police to drop by for a wellness check.

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Wendy Williams' fight against her court-ordered guardianship has garnered immense attention on social media, with calls for help from her friends and family. Along with the #FreeWendy campaign, a GoFundMe was started for the former television host in January 2025, raising over $48K.