Trump taps his attorney Alina Habba to serve as counselor to the president
Dec 8, 2024, 6:21 PM | Updated: 7:07 pm
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 06: Alina Habba, Attorney for Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks during a press conference at Trump Tower on September 06, 2024 in New York City. Trump held a press conference hours after attending a federal appeals court attempting to get a new trial after a jury found he sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll. A nine-member jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages following a two-week trial last year and another jury awarded her $83.3 million in damages after finding Trump defamed her again in 2022. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he is appointing one of his defense attorneys in the New York hush money case as counselor to the president.
Alina Habba, 40, defended Trump earlier this year, also serving as his legal spokesperson. Habba has been spending time with the president-elect since the election at his Florida club Mar-a-Lago.
“She has been unwavering in her loyalty and unmatched in her resolve — standing with me through numerous ‘trials,’ battles and countless days in Court,” Trump posted on his social network Truth Social. “Few understand the Weaponization of the ‘Injustice’ System better than Alina.”
Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes when a New York jury in May found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.
In Trump’s first term, the position of counselor was held by Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway. Habba has Iraqi ancestry and is Chaldean, which is Iraq’s largest Christian denomination and one of the Catholic Church’s Eastern rites.
Habba frequently accompanied Trump on the campaign trail and was one of the speakers at the late October rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden.
On Sunday, Trump also announced he is bringing back former staffer Michael Anton to serve as director of policy planning at the State Department. Anton served as the National Security Council spokesman from 2017 to 2018.
Trump said he also will be appointing Michael Needham, a former chief of staff for Sen. Marco Rubio, as counselor of the State Department. The Florida senator was chosen by Trump to be his next secretary of state.
