The attorney representing Donald Trump in his Georgia case once donated to the campaign of the prosecutor who brought the charges against the former president.
Drew Findling, the celebrity attorney now representing Mr Trump against his RICO charges in the Peach State, has backed several Democrats, including donating to the 2020 campaign of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Mr Findling is an Atlanta attorney who has represented a number of well-known clients such as Cardi B, Offset, DaBaby, as well as NBA Youngboy, leading to him getting the nickname #BillionDollarLawyer, Rolling Stone magazine notes.
He donated $1,440 to Ms Willis’s campaign in July 2020, campaign disclosure reports show, as pointed out by the Democratic research group American Bridge 21st Century.
Mr Findling began representing Mr Trump in August 2022.
Unlike Mr Trump, Ms Willis came out victorious in her 2020 campaign, allowing her to bring a RICO indictment outlining 41 counts against Mr Trump and 18 associates in connection to their attempts to overturn the presidential election results in the state.
Mr Trump has been charged with solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, conspiracy to commit filing false documents, and making false statements and writings.
The former president has taken to aggressively attacking Ms Willis, calling her a “racist” and baselessly alleging that she had an “affair” with a “gang member” that she had prosecuted.
He also claimed that she’s “corrupt” as well as a “rabid partisan” following Monday night’s indictment. On Tuesday, he called her a “failed District Attorney”.
Mr Trump’s defence lawyers wrote in a statement responding to the indictment that prosecutors had put forward a “one-sided grand jury presentation” that “relied on witnesses who harbor their own personal and political interests — some of whom ran campaigns touting their efforts against the accused and/or profited from book deals and employment opportunities as a result”.
“We look forward to a detailed review of this indictment which is undoubtedly just as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process has been,” the attorneys wrote, with the top name on the statement being that of Mr Findling.
The attorney has been slamming Mr Trump in public for years. When Mr Trump went after the Central Park Five – five Black adolescents falsely accused of the rape of a white jogger in Central Park – Mr Findling said Mr Trump’s outbursts were “racist, cruel, sick, unforgivable and un-American”.
Mr Findling said Mr Trump was “pathetic” after he suggested that NBA superstar Lebron James was unintelligent.
The lawyer also donated to Mr Trump’s opponent in the 2020 election, now-President Joe Biden. He sent $8,400 to the Biden Victory Fund and the Biden campaign.
In August of last year, as he began representing Mr Trump, Mr Findling told Insider in a statement that he “may differ politically from many of my clients, but that doesn’t change my commitment to defend against wrongful investigations”.
He said at the time that the Georgia investigation into Mr Trump was “erroneous and politically driven persecution”.
Ms Willis held a press conference as she announced the indictment on Monday night.
“I make decisions in this office based on the facts and the law,” she said. “The law is completely nonpartisan. That’s how decisions are made in every case.”
“We look at the facts, we look at the law, and we bring charges,” she added.
