Reacting to a report that Donald Trump abruptly changed the lead lawyer who will defend him in Georgia on racketeering charges just hours before turning himself into an Atlanta jail, CNN legal analyst Elie Hoenig suggested the former president is creating chaos for his legal team with the constant turnover.
Early Thursday morning CNN reported, "Drew Findling, the lawyer who has led Trump’s defense in Georgia, is being replaced by Steven Sadow, an Atlanta-based attorney."
Sadow issued a statement explaining, "I have been retained to represent President Trump in the Fulton County, Georgia, case. The president should never have been indicted. He is innocent of all the charges brought against him. We look forward to the case being dismissed or, if necessary, an unbiased, open-minded jury finding the president not guilty. Prosecutions intended to advance or serve the ambitions and careers of political opponents of the president have no place in our justice system.”
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Asked for comment, Hoenig first said the choice of Sadow was a good move but then added a caveat.
"Yeah, so it's a smart move," he began. "You need a local lawyer and this case is going to play out in Georgia. It's smart to get someone who knows the court system and who really frankly can relate to the jury. Juries look for that and they can sense is this person from here? Is this someone we are going to inherently believe? That's a factor."
"Donald Trump does have to make sure — he has four pending cases — he has to get his legal team in order," he cautioned. "You can't shuffle in and out lead lawyers on each case sort of on a whim, you know, the way some White House staff were shuffled in and out on a whim."
"This is different," he elaborated. "Those lawyers are going to spend hundreds, thousands of hours getting to know all of the nuances of this case. If you just cashier one to another, you are setting yourself up for a major failure. If I was advising him on all of these I'd say pick your lead guy on each case, stick with him, let him do his job."
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CNN 08 24 2023 08 03 01youtu.be
