FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – President-elect Donald Trump has announced the appointment of one of his defense attorneys from the New York hush money case as counselor to the president.
Alina Habba, who is 40 years old, previously defended Trump and also served as his legal spokesperson earlier in the year. Since the election, Habba has been spending time with the president-elect at his Florida club, Mar-a-Lago.
In a post on his social network Truth Social, Trump praised Habba’s loyalty and resolve, stating, “She has been unwavering in her loyalty and unmatched in her resolve — standing with me through numerous ‘trials,’ battles and countless days in Court.” According to Trump, few individuals grasp 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.
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