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Wife of Trump Lawyer Found in Car With Inmate Fined $2,500

Teresa Burchfield's husband, a prominent D.C. attorney, filed for divorce weeks after she was arrested

The wife of a prominent D.C. attorney will face a $2,500 fine after she was caught in the backseat of her Maserati with a Fauquier County Jail inmate.

Teresa Burchfield pleaded no contest on Monday to charges of disorderly conduct.

A call for suspicious behavior in Sept. 2017 led deputies to discover Burchfield and a jail inmate, 23-year-old Garrett Portela, in the car. Portela was allowed to work outside the jail fence under a trustee program.

Burchfield was initially charged with unauthorized delivery for giving Portela a bag of vitamins.

"The female subject was delivering unauthorized articles to the inmate," Maj. Jeremy Falls told News4.

Court documents reveal more details. Portela told investigators he had been meeting with Burchfield for a month. She would bring him cigarettes and they would have sex in her car, court documents say.

Burchfield's husband, Bobby Burchfield, is a D.C.-based lawyer for King & Spaulding. The firm's website says he is an ethics advisor to President Donald Trump's businesses.

Documents obtained by News4 show that Bobby Burchfield cited his wife's arrest when he filed for divorce weeks later.

Teresa Burchfield emailed her husband hours after news of the arrest broke, court documents show. One had the subject line, "please hire a crisis management firm."

"Which you should have done yesterday," the email read. "We could have put out a statement that I was not arrested for having sex in the back of a car. In fact we were just talking and I was arrested for the items."

Burchfield and her attorney declined to comment on the plea.

The judge fined Burchfield $2,500 with $1,000 suspended. She has nine months to pay.

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