Trump picks hush money defense attorney Alina Habba as counselor to the president

By: Shawn
President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he would appoint one of his defense attorneys in the New York hush money case as his counselor.

Alina Habba, 40, defended Trump earlier this year and also served as his legal spokesman. Since the election, Habba has spent time with the president-elect at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.

Trump's lawyer Alina Habba.
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

"She has been unwavering in her loyalty and unmatched in her resolve - standing with me through numerous 'trials', battles, and countless days in court," Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social. "Few understand the weaponization of the 'injustice' system better than Alina."

Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes in May, when a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 counts in a plan to illegally influence the 2016 election by paying a hush-money to a porn star who claimed the two had sex.

Kellyanne Conway, a Republican strategist, served as Trump's advisor throughout his first administration. Habba is of Iraqi descent and Chaldean, the biggest Christian denomination in Iraq and one of the Eastern rites of the Catholic Church.

Habba regularly joined Trump on the campaign trail and was one of the speakers at the late-October event in New York's Madison Square Garden.

On Sunday, Trump also announced that former aide Michael Anton will return to the State Department as director of policy planning. Anton worked as the national security council's spokesperson from 2017 to 2018.

Trump also said that Michael Needham, a former chief of staff for Senator Marco Rubio, will be appointed as the State Department's counselor. Trump nominated the Florida senator as his next secretary of state. FA

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