(RightWing.org) – Former President Donald Trump faced an arraignment hearing in Miami on Tuesday, in the latest stage of his prosecution on charges of mishandling classified documents. His new lead counsel, Todd Blanche, entered his not guilty plea. A former federal prosecutor, Blanche also has a lot of experience as a defender, making him a good choice for Trump.
On June 13, Trump appeared in a Miami federal court to be arraigned on 37 counts, 31 on classified document charges and another 6 on alleged efforts to obstruct officials trying to retrieve them. The plea was entered on his behalf by Blanche, who told the judge, “We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty.”
Blanche is a former federal prosecutor with the US Attorney’s office for the Southern Division of New York, who earned his law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 2003. He joined that office in 200, after three years as a law clerk, but he’d already worked there for four years as a paralegal while he was in law school.
In 2014, Blanche resigned as a US attorney and joined WilmerHale as a counsel specializing in criminal litigation. In 2017, he moved to Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP as a partner; while there, he represented former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort. He also represented Rudy Giuliani, the former NYC mayor who served as Trump’s personal attorney from 2018 to 2021.
In April, Blanche joined Trump’s legal team to defend him against a separate indictment in Manhattan, where he’s facing charges that he made hush payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Now he’s also taking the lead in the federal documents case.
Around the same time as he started representing Trump in the Manhattan case, Blanche left Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft and founded Blanche Law. It’s a safe bet that, whatever the future holds for his law firm, it’s always going to be best known for its first client.
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