Hours Before His Arrest, Donald Trump Switches Up His Legal Team—Again

Just hours before he is due to surrender to authorities in Fulton County, Georgia, Donald Trump has replaced his top defense lawyer.

Trump and 18 co-defendants have been charged with felony racketeering for their role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. The majority of the co-defendants, including Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesebro, have already turned themselves in. Trump is set to surrender Thursday evening.

But Thursday morning, Trump added Atlanta defense lawyer Steve Sadow to his team, The New York Times reported. Sadow will replace Drew Findling, who was one of the key negotiators behind setting Trump’s $200,000 bond.

Sadow is reportedly considered to be one of Atlanta’s top criminal defense lawyers. He has experience working on racketeering cases and defending reality television celebrities. In one of his previous cases, he represented the rapper Gunna, who had been charged with racketeering. In another case, Sadow represented Howard K. Stern, who was accused of conspiring to give prescription drugs to his then-girlfriend Anna Nicole Smith, which contributed to her death. Stern was ultimately found guilty.

It’s not unusual for Trump either to change up his legal team or to throw last-minute Hail Marys. A day before he was arraigned the first time in New York for business fraud, Trump switched up his legal team and hired white-collar criminal defense lawyer Todd Blanche as lead counsel.

Trump’s need for legal representation is growing rapidly, as his legal battles continue to pile up. In addition to the indictments in New York and Georgia, Trump has also been indicted in Florida for mishandling classified documents and in Washington for trying to overturn the 2020 election. He has been found liable of sexual assault and defamation, and he has another defamation lawsuit set to go to trial in January.

Good luck to all those lawyers getting paid, though. Giuliani recently flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort to beg his employer to pay for Giuliani’s services—and Trump still refused to pay up.

Six of the eight Republican presidential candidates said during the debate Wednesday that they would support Donald Trump if he got the nomination, even if he were convicted in one of his many legal battles, a sign of how much influence he still has over the party.

The eight leading presidential candidates, minus frontrunner Trump, took the stage in Milwaukee. When moderator Brett Baier referred to Trump as “the elephant not in the room,” the crowd cheered.

Baier then asked the candidates to raise their hand if they would still support a convicted Trump as nominee, reminding them that they signed a pledge to support whoever wins the party nomination.

Doug Burgum, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Ron DeSantis all raised their hands. So did Mike Pence, despite the fact that an angry mob of Trump supporters wanted to hang him during the January 6 insurrection.

Chris Christie also half-heartedly raised his hand, but later clarified that it was in disapproval. “Here’s the bottom line: Someone has got to stop normalizing this conduct,” Christie said. “Whether or not you believe the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of president of the United States.” His comments were met with both cheers and boos.

Asa Hutchinson also did not raise his hand and said Trump has been “morally disqualified from being president again.”

Still, the majority’s weird hand-raising is a sign of how powerful Trump still is. He isn’t even at the debate, he is facing 91 charges and will be arrested for the fourth time later this week, and yet everyone is still too afraid to criticize him.

This article has been updated to clarify that Chris Christie raising his hand was in disapproval, not support, of Trump.

Chris Christie had the first zinger of the Republican debate Wednesday night, attacking Vivek Ramaswamy for being like Barack Obama.

The eight leading presidential candidates, minus front-runner Donald Trump, took the stage in Milwaukee. As Ramaswamy tried to portray himself as an outsider and a dark horse, Christie took aim.

“I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT standing up here,” the former New Jersey governor said. “The last person in one of these debates … who stood in the middle of the stage and said, ‘What’s a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here?’ was Barack Obama, and I’m afraid we’re dealing with the same type of amateur standing on the stage tonight.”

While this was probably the most devastating comparison Christie could have made, it is also highly inaccurate. Obama is ideologically open-minded. Ramaswamy is a 9/11 denier who is mainly interested in battling “wokeness,” taking away rights, and, apparently, caving to Russia and China.

Eight presidential candidates have qualified for the Republican Party’s first primary debate on Wednesday evening.

Sure, the debate might not mean much when Donald Trump, the party’s front-runner, is skipping out on the whole thing. Still, it is a chance for the American public to hear directly from candidates on what they really stand for.

If you are watching the Republican debate, join us in a game of Bingo.

Secret Service agents were in contact with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes before he helped lead an insurrection on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, according to a new report.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, published emails on Wednesday revealing that a member of the Secret Service told other agents in September 2020 that he had received a call from Rhodes informing him that the far-right white nationalist group planned to provide “security details” around Donald Trump’s visit to Fayetteville, North Carolina.

The email detailed that the Oath Keepers security detail would be composed of “primarily retired law enforcement/former military members who are very pro-LEO [law enforcement officer] and Pro Trump. Their stated purpose is to provide protection and medical attention to Trump supporters if they come under attack by leftist groups.”

The Secret Service member who spoke to Rhodes even admitted to other members in the agency that he was an Oath Keeper himself. “I am the unofficial liaison to the Oath Keepers (inching towards official),” he wrote.

The CREW report confirms Rhodes’ claims last year that the far-right group had a contact within the Secret Service. Rhodes admitted this during his trial, when he was charged with seditious conspiracy for attempting to stop Joe Biden’s presidential win.

It’s not clear from the CREW report whether the contact continued past September 2020, but the government watchdog notes that the agent claiming to be an “unofficial liaison” suggests a longer-term relationship.

In addition to having ties to the January 6 insurrection, Oath Keepers have worked alongside the Ku Klux Klan, deploying members at polling sites to watch voters, and have compared Hillary Clinton to Hitler on their website.