Trump indicted: Former president fails to expand legal team before court surrender
Kaelan Deese
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There are signs former president Donald Trump may be struggling to assemble his legal team in the hours leading up to his arraignment at a Miami federal courthouse.
A Tuesday morning filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida indicated Trump would be represented by at least two attorneys, including top former federal prosecutor Todd Blanche and former Florida solicitor general Chris Kise. The pair have represented Trump in a range of past and ongoing litigation.
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After a Monday evening dinner with the attorneys and other advisers at the Trump Doral resort, the former president tapped Kise, who is licensed to practice law in the Southern District of Florida, with Blanche being sponsored by him to appear pro hac vice, a term that describes adding an attorney to a case in a jurisdiction they are not licensed to practice in.
“Todd Blanche is not admitted to practice in the Southern District of Florida and is a member in good standing of the Bar of the State of New York,” according to the filing, which acknowledges Blanche has not filed “more than three pro hac vice motions in different cases in this District within the last 365 days.”
Kise was previously sidelined from the Mar-a-Lago documents case in September. His appearance on Tuesday could be a signal that Trump is still struggling to find adequate representation after reports that the former president was having trouble finding a specialist national security lawyer eligible to possess a security clearance.
Trump was indicted last week on 37 counts stemming from over 100 classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago last August, with charges including willful retention of national defense records and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Trump’s co-defendant, his valet Walt Nauta, will be represented by Stanley Woodward.
The former president’s legal team was reshuffled last week when two of his attorneys, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, resigned the day after the indictment.
Blanche is also representing Trump in his New York criminal case, defending the former president against fraud charges related to alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.
U.S. Magistrate Judge John Goodman will preside over the arraignment, though the case will be overseen by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who ruled in Trump’s favor in an earlier dispute in the investigation.
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Trump is set to appear in federal court at 3 p.m. Tuesday and is expected to plead not guilty.
The Washington Examiner contacted Trump’s counsel for a response.