Attorneys for former President Donald Trump, left to right: Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles waits in the hallway for the courtroom to open for a hearing in Manhattan Supreme Court, Tuesday, May 23, 2023, in New York (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer). Trump attorney Stephen Weiss arrives outside of the federal courthouse on Monday, Aug. 28, 2023, in Washington, D.C. following Trump’s indictment for allegedly subverting the 2020 election (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana). Emil Bove, left, and Todd Blanche, right, exit the New York State appellate court, Monday, April 8, 2024, in New York (AP Photo/Peter K. Afriyie).
Jury selection begins in Donald Trump’s criminal hush money and election interference trial in New York Monday and representing the former president are attorneys Todd Blanche, Emil Bove, Stephen Weiss and Susan R. Necheles.
Trump faces 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records. He has pleaded not guilty. Integral to that scheme, according to federal prosecutors, is the charge that Trump paid porn actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money just ahead of the 2016 election in order to cover up a tryst they had 10 years earlier.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Who are these counselors entrusted to represent the first former president to face criminal charges in American history? Law&Crime takes a look.
Todd Blanche doesn’t just represent Trump in his New York case, but the former federal prosecutor also represents Trump in his classifieds document case in Florida as well as Trump’s indictment on four felony counts in Washington, D.C., for allegedly conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election.
Attorney Todd Blanche arrives at Trump Tower, Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston)
Blanche — a registered Democrat turned Republican who, for a time, also worked in the same office as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — has effectively uprooted his entire professional life to represent Trump in the historic case.
No stranger to the universe of the former president’s allies, the onetime Southern District of New York prosecutor ended up representing Trump’s 2016 campaign adviser Paul Manafort when Manafort faced mortgage fraud charges in New York in 2020. Blanche also represented Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump aide who briefly served as a senior White House adviser in the Trump administration and was later subpoenaed by the House congressional committee investigating Jan. 6 for questions about efforts to organize fake electors. Epshteyn, a reported “enabler” and “yes-man” for Trump, testified before the Georgia special grand jury about the alleged election subversion efforts there, too. Notably, in 2023, Ephsteyn was arrested for allegedly groping two women in an Arizona nightclub, The Associated Press reported.
Blanche’s representation of Manafort delighted Trump, prompting the former president to tap him as his own attorney for his New York criminal indictment after the search for a suitable and willing counsel came up short. Blanche ultimately left a prestigious New York law firm to open his own practice and began representing Trump shortly thereafter. This is only the second time Blanche has defended a client at a criminal trial. Blanche Law Firm has racked up millions from the Save America PAC, according to the New York Times, receiving $3 million in the last year alone.
Notably, Blanche, who graduated from Brooklyn Law School, moved from New York to Florida once he took on the case and the Times reported there was a period where he briefly listed the address of his firm as 40 Wall Street, the lower Manhattan building owned by the former president. When press questioned Blanche about it, the address was removed from the site shortly thereafter.
Susan Necheles is a longtime defense attorney from New York who also represented Trump in his civil fraud case and is known for representing the late mafia crime boss Venero Mangano.
The FEC reported that Trump’s political action committee, Save America — which pays most of his legal fees — spent $76 million in the last year. The bulk of that, roughly $47 million, FEC disbursement reports show, went to lawyers and other legal fees.
The PAC paid Necheles’s law firm just over $1 million, according to Forbes.
Attorney Susan Necheles, representing former U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives for a hearing at New York Criminal Court, Monday, March 25, 2024, in New York. (Curtis Means/Dailymail.com via AP, Pool)
Necheles is a graduate of Yale Law who also runs a private practice in New York. This is the first time Necheles is expected to argue before the presiding judge in Trump’s criminal matter, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.
Also on Trump’s legal team in New York are attorneys Emil Bove and Stephen Weiss. Weiss is an attorney at Blanche Law. Weiss, according to LinkedIn, also worked as a white collar defense attorney at the firm Cadawalder, Wickersham & Taft, the same firm Blanche worked at before heading out on his own. Weiss is also assigned to work Trump’s criminal case in Florida.
Bove is former federal prosecutor, like Blanche, with experience in the Southern District of New York. He came aboard Blanche Law last fall. He’s had experience on the prosecutor’s side of things as well: he worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York for seven years and, like Weiss, he also works Trump’s criminal case in Florida.
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