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| Home Front: Politix |
| Drew Findling: Trump's new lawyer once called him 'racist, cruel' |
| 2023-08-20 |
| [BBC] Ex-clients describe him as "the biggest lawyer in the game" and a "Robin Hood with Jesus swag". Now he's defending the most high-profile client of all. Drew Findling was hired last year to represent Donald Trump in the criminal investigation into election interference in the state of Georgia in the 2020 election. The veteran lawyer has previously criticised Mr Trump and donated to Fani Willis, the woman now prosecuting him. He's also a revered figure in Atlanta, or as he calls it "Hip Hop Hollywood". A self-identified liberal, the 64-year-old has attacked the former president on several occasions. In 2017, he tweeted that President Trump's firing of the federal prosecutor in Manhattan was "a sign of FEAR that [the prosecutor] would aggressively investigate the stench hovering" over him. Two months later, he again took issue with the then-president over his stance on the Central Park Five, a group of teenagers wrongfully convicted in the rape of a white jogger in New York's Central Park in 1989. Mr Trump had forcefully advocated for the death penalty and did not retract his comments after the verdicts were overturned, which Mr Findling said was "racist, cruel, sick, unforgivable, and un-American". And in 2018, Mr Findling inserted himself into a feud between Mr Trump and basketball star LeBron James, using a social media post to call the former president "pathetic" and "the racist architect of fraudulent Trump University". Asked why he is now defending the ex-president, Mr Findling likened his decision to John Adams - the second US president who, in his earlier career as a lawyer, had defied anti-British sentiments and defended British soldiers against murder charges arising from the Boston Massacre of 1770. "I do not believe that we choose our client or clients based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, political belief or the substantive issues involved in the crime," he told the New York Times last year. "We have our personal lives and we have our personal politics, and I don't apologise for my personal politics." In addition to his anti-Trump past, Mr Findling also donated $1,440 (£1,130) in July 2020 to Democrat Fani Willis's successful bid for the top prosecutor post in Georgia's most populous county. As Fulton County district attorney, Ms Willis on Monday indicted Mr Trump and 18 associates over their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state, narrowly won by Joe Biden on his way to the White House. The former president's legal team has indicated it will lean heavily on a free speech defence to contest the charges in this case and a separate election subversion case brought by the federal government. "When it comes to political speech, you can not only advocate for a position, but you can take action, you can petition, you can ask even your vice-president to pause the vote," attorney John Lauro, who is leading the defence in the government's case, told CNN earlier this month. "Asking is aspirational. Asking is not action. It's core free speech." Such a defence may give insight into the hiring of an Atlanta-based trial lawyer with more than three decades of experience. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #1 If he wins, brilliant recruitment of the black vote. If he loses, simple pandering. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2023-08-20 06:08 |