Donald Trump has had a heck of a time finding good legal representation, and that’s a shame: He certainly has a ton of legal (and financial) woes on his plate right now. Turns out if you’re infamous for stiffing contractors (or trying to pay lawyers with a horse), to say nothing of generally being a difficult person, that may come back to bite you. Now his problems appear to be getting even worse: As per CNN, an experienced — and very expensive — lawyer he hired less than a month ago has already been sidelined.
After the FBI searched the resort he now lives in, Trump scrambled to find attorneys to help him deal with a matter that could land him in the slammer. One person he landed on, after a weekslong search, was Chris Kise, a former Florida solicitor general. Kise had been seen as a good get for Trump, as he has a deep understanding of Florida law, which is exactly what he needs in a case involving the former president absconding with 11,000 government documents, some of them of a highly combustible nature.
For his services, Trump paid Kise an unusually large retainer fee of $3 million. He did so upfront, perhaps because, again, Trump has a history of not paying those in his employ.
But now, while Kise will stay on Trump’s legal team, his role is being diminished, multiple sources tell CNN. A Trump spokesperson denied the change in Kise’s position.
So far, Kise only appears to be involved in Trump’s Justice Department case, involving the documents seized by the feds, but even there his role seems to be relatively minimal. He wasn’t, for instance, at the DC federal courthouse when Trump attorneys attempted to block a grand jury from seeing conversations he had towards the end of his presidency, when he was trying to stay in power.
Kise has a pretty impressive CV. He’s won four Supreme Court cases, and he’s previously worked for the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, whom Trump reportedly hit with some insults that could also pertain to himself.
(Via CNN)