Todd Blanche and Chris Kise, two high-powered attorneys from New York and Florida, respectively, appeared alongside former President Donald Trump for his arraignment at a federal courthouse in Florida on Tuesday.
Blanche and Kise have been part of Trump’s legal defense for some time as the former president battles state and federal indictments and investigations. After his federal indictment last week, Trump reshuffled his legal team. Two of his attorneys, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, resigned, and Blanche took the lead on the case with Kise assisting.
Trump brought Blanche on in early April. Blanche resigned as a partner at the elite law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, the oldest firm in New York City, to take Trump’s case.
“I have been asked to represent Trump in the recently charged DA case, and after much thought/consideration, I have decided it is the best thing for me to do and an opportunity I should not pass up,” he said in a statement at the time.
Blanche is a former federal prosecutor and a veteran defender in white-collar crime cases. As a federal prosecutor, Blanche served as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for nine years, earning accolades from the Department of Justice for his work.
He co-led the Southern District of New York’s White Plains Division, running investigations and prosecutions of public corruption, bank fraud, racketeering, and other white-collar crimes. He went into private practice after leaving the Southern District of New York, eventually joining Cadwalader in September 2017.
As a defense attorney, Blanche represented Paul Manafort, a Trump ally and chair of the former president’s 2016 campaign. Manafort was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison in 2019 on charges stemming from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. Similar New York state charges leveled against Manafort were dropped for double jeopardy.
Blanche also represented Igor Fruman, an associate of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. Fruman took a plea deal on campaign finance-related charges.
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Blanche’s partner in Trump’s document case, Kise, was brought on to Trump’s legal team in August to work on the documents case. Kise soon shifted to working on Trump’s defense in a New York case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Kise’s CV includes four successfully argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He has argued dozens of others in front of the Supreme Court of Florida and has extensive experience across state and federal courts.
Kise is a longtime fixture in Florida GOP politics. He served as Florida’s solicitor general from 2003 to 2006 under then-Attorney General Charlie Crist, who was a Republican at the time. Kise served as counsel to Crist when he became governor, and Kise later served as general counsel to former Florida Governor Rick Scott’s transition team in 2010 and then again for Governor Ron DeSantis’s team in 2018.
During DeSantis’s 2018 run for governor against Democratic candidate and former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, Kise released 2016 text messages showing Gillum accepted tickets to see the Broadway play “Hamilton” from an undercover FBI agent. The texts exacerbated ethical and corruption concerns hanging over Gillum’s mayoral administration.
Kise, who made the texts public two weeks before election day, denied releasing the messages for any political motive. He said he was doing what was right for his then-client, Adam Corey, a Tallahassee lobbyist who was once considered a staunch Gillum ally.