Former President Donald Trump is hiring a top criminal defense attorney to lead his legal team as he prepares for his Manhattan criminal case, it was revealed on Monday.
Todd Blanche told his law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft that he was leaving his job in order to represent Trump, according to Politico.
The former president was indicted by a grand jury convened by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg last week.
“I have been asked to represent Trump in the recently charged DA case, and after much thought/consideration, I have decided it is the best thing for me to do and an opportunity I should not pass up,” Blanche wrote in an email to his former employer, the report stated.
Blanche is a former assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York. He represented former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in a Manhattan mortgage fraud case along with other charges which were eventually dropped. He also acted as Igor Fruman’s lawyer. Fruman, a Soviet-born American businessman and associate of Rudy Giuliani, was alleged to have along with Lev Parnas conducted a search in Ukraine for dirt on Trump’s political opponents. In January 2022, he pleaded guilty to foreign campaign violations in return for being sentenced to a year in prison.
In the email, Blanche explained that he would not have been able to represent Trump while continuing at the New York law firm, one of the most elite in the city. “Obviously, doing this as a partner at Cadwalader was not an option, so I have had to make the difficult choice to leave the firm.”