Former President Trump announced Friday that attorneys Jame Trusty and John Rowley will no longer represent him in his classified documents case, a day after Trump was indicted on a reported seven criminal charges.
Trump made the announcement on his media site Truth Social, where he called the investigation into his handling of classified documents “the Greatest Witch Hunt of all time.”
Saying that he would now be represented by attorney Todd Blanche “and a firm to be named later,” Trump added, “I want to thank Jim Trusty and John Rowley for their work, but they were up against a very dishonest, corrupt, evil, and ‘sick’ group of people, the likes of which has not been seen before. We will be announcing additional lawyers in the coming days.”
Trump was indicted Thursday evening by a federal grand jury in Florida and informed that he must appear in a federal court in Miami Tuesday afternoon to be processed on federal charges.
Trump is reportedly facing seven criminal counts, including: unauthorized retention of national security documents, conspiracy charges, obstruction, making a false statement to a law enforcement officer about a fact material to the officer’s investigation, mishandling official documents, and contempt of court for willfully disobeying a court order to hand oversubpoenaed documents to the federal government.
The charges stem from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into whether Trump broke the law in his mishandling of classified documents after an FBI raid had discovered hundreds of hundreds of federal documents—many of them classified—at his Florida country club residence, Mar-a-Lago. Smith, a veteran career prosecutor, had received his appointment as special counsel from Attorney General Merrick Garland in November.
The former President has denied any wrongdoing, posting on his Truth Social media site in all caps Thursday evening, “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”
He followed up with a video, during which he said, “There’s never been anything like what’s happening. I’m an innocent man, I’m an innocent person…It’s a hoax, the whole thing is a hoax.”
A Secret Service official has said its personnel will meet with Trump’s team Friday to begin security and logistics planning related to his federal court appearance Tuesday afternoon, which is scheduled for 3pm ET in Miami.
