The former president has a new lawyer on board.
Donald Trump’s shaking up his legal team right down to the wire. Just hours before he was set to surrender at Georgia’s Fulton County jail on Thursday, he named high-profile attorney Steven Sadow to replace lead his defense on charges related to his efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.
According to CNN, Sadow confirmed that he had been retained to represent Trump and officially joined his legal team after filing the necessary paperwork the morning of the former president’s booking. This means he will replace Drew Findling, who had been the top lawyer in the former president’s legal team.
Some experts are already calling the last-minute move a bad decision. Georgia State Law professor Anthony Michael Kreis tweeted that Findling was “the best lawyer he had.”
Here’s more on what we know about Trump’s legal defense in Georgia, plus who’s staying on.
Who’s Trump legal team in Georgia?
Findling was initially picked to lead Trump’s defense in Georgia. But they were considered an odd pair from the get-go: Findling — who earned the nickname #BillionDollarLawyer — is a self-described liberal and repeatedly criticized the former president before he was hired to represent him.
While those close to Trump say Findling’s departure had nothing to do with his performance, an unnamed source told The New York Times that the former president was looking for a more “sophisticated” team, and that Sadow is considered the “best criminal defense attorney in Georgia.” He previously represented former University of Georgia linebacker Adam Anderson, who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting two women. Other clients include rapper Rick Ross, radio host Howard Stern, and rapper Tyrone Griffin, who goes by Ty Dolla $ign.
It’s also not the first time Trump has swapped representation — he previously reconfigured his legal team in the case surrounding whether he mishandled classified documents after leaving the White House.
The rest of the former president’s team in Georgia will remain intact, with Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg staying on alongside Sadow.
You might be wondering who’s paying all of these lawyers. It’s not Trump personally: The lawyers working for him in connection with the four criminal cases are being paid with donations from supporters.
What do we know about Trump’s defense?
Before Findling’s departure, he vigorously defended Trump. This included trying (unsuccessfully) to have the evidence that was collected by a special grand jury thrown out and to have Willis disqualified before she announced charges against the former president. (But he did help negotiate the $200,000 bond that’s keeping Trump out of prison after his booking.)
Similarly, Sadow is expected to mount an aggressive defense. He has already rejected an effort to move the trial date from March 4, 2024, to Oct. 23, 2023, following a motion for a speedy trial from fellow defendant Kenneth Chesebro.
“President Trump also alerts the Court that he will be filing a timely motion to sever his case from that of co-defendant Chesebro, who has filed a demand for speedy trial, or any other co-defendant who files such a demand,” Sadow wrote in response to Willis’s motion.
He has also previously been critical about the way racketeering charges, like the ones against Trump, have been used by Georgia prosecutors. As recently as 2021, right as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis started investigating the former president, Sadow told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, had been “overused for quite a long time.” (For the record, the statute is defined more broadly to go after gangs and other forms of organized crime than the federal law that it’s based on.)
“The president should never have been indicted. He is innocent of all the charges brought against him,” Sadow said in a statement. “We look forward to the case being dismissed or, if necessary, an unbiased, open minded jury finding the president not guilty. Prosecutions intended to advance or serve the ambitions and careers of political opponents of the president have no place in our justice system.”
