Alina Habba often joined Trump during his campaign events and even spoke at a rally in late October at Madison Square Garden in New York.
In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, President-elect Donald Trump has proclaimed that he will be designating one of his defense attorneys from the New York hush money case as counselor to the president.
Alina Habba, aged 40, previously represented Trump earlier this year and also held the role of his legal spokesperson. She has been seen in the company of the president-elect at his Florida establishment Mar-a-Lago since the election.
Trump expressed his esteem for Habba in a post on his new social media platform Truth Social, 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. Few understand 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.
