Former President Donald Trump added a new white-collar defense attorney to his team defending him against charges leveled by special counsel Jack Smith that he unlawfully retained classified documents after leaving the Oval Office.
Trump added Stephen Weiss on Thursday, who is counsel at Blanche Law, the same firm headed by the former president's lead New York attorney, Todd Blanche.
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According to Weiss's LinkedIn page, he has worked at Blanche Law for at least two months and previously spent nearly seven years working in white-collar defense at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.
Weiss also spent a brief period between August and November 2015 as an intern with the United States Department of Justice Office of International Affairs and "worked closely with international regulatory and enforcement bodies to coordinate criminal investigations involving the U.S. and other countries," according to a brief biography on Blanche Law's webpage.
Blanche himself was a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York before shifting to private practice as a white-collar criminal defense attorney. He was asked in April to join the Trump legal team defending the former president against fraud charges related to alleged hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Trump is also represented by Chris Kise, who is listed as the lead attorney on the classified documents case and was essential to sponsoring Blanche to appear pro hac vice, a term that describes adding an attorney to a case in a jurisdiction they are not licensed to practice in.
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Last month, Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges in connection to Smith's investigation alleging the former president unlawfully retained classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the Oval Office, including 31 counts of willful retention of classified documents under the Espionage Act.
The former president's legal team will be back in the court of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on July 18 for a hearing about procedures for handling the classified information, marking the first of likely many proceedings on this matter as the Justice Department is seeking a December start to Trump's trial.