Who Are Donald Trump's Hush-Money Case Lawyers, Todd Blanche And Susan Necheles?
Donald Trump's "hush money" case marks the first criminal trial of any former president. For the case, in which he's alleged to have illegally falsified business records covering up payments to people with damaging stories on him in the months before the 2016 election, he's being represented by a different team of lawyers than we've seen him with at his recent civil trials. There's no Alina Habba next to him this time, though Habba did bat down reports of Trump falling asleep in court despite not being there herself.
Instead, Trump's lead lawyers for this criminal trial are Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles. Here's what we know about these seasoned criminal defense lawyers.
Blanche seems set to potentially be the most high-profile lawyer on the case after he gave the opening argument in Trump's criminal trial; he started with the words, "Donald Trump is innocent," via CNN. And he may have already found himself on the judge's bad side. During a hearing over whether Trump had knowingly violated the judge's gag order, Judge Juan M. Merchan told Blanche, "you're losing all credibility in the court," per Fox News. Not what a lawyer wants to hear.
Todd Blanche is working on multiple cases for Donald Trump
When Donald Trump became the first president to be indicted on criminal charges in late March 2023 in relation to the alleged hush money payments, he hired Todd Blanche, who specializes in white-collar crime. Blanche is also one of Trump's lawyers on his classified documents case in Florida and the 2020 election interference case in Washington D.C.
Blanche got his Juris Doctorate from Brooklyn Law School in 2003, according to his LinkedIn. Twenty years later, in April 2023, he became a founder of Blanche Law, which also employs Emil Bove as a partner— Bove is another lawyer working on Trump's hush-money case.
Before he founded his own firm, Blanche worked for over five years as a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, the oldest law firm currently on Wall Street. He also worked for over eight years in the U.S. attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, which gives him something in common with the opposition — Alvin Bragg, lead prosecutor in Trump's hush money case, also worked in that office for a time.
Susan Necheles has worked with the Trump Organization before
Susan Necheles graduated from Yale Law School in 1983 with her Juris Doctorate, per LinkedIn. She was on the Trump Organization team of lawyers in the New York criminal tax fraud case that resulted in a guilty verdict for the Trump side in December 2022. This is not to be confused with the New York civil fraud case in which Donald Trump was one of the defendants and found guilty in February 2024.
Necheles has had some relatively high-profile clients before, though none as big as Trump. She represented Venero Mangano, aka "Benny Eggs," a high-ranking member of the Genovese crime family. She also defended Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman in the Nxivm sex cult case in the late 2010s, the same case that saw "Smallville" actor Allison Mack imprisoned.
Necheles is now Managing Partner at NechelesLaw LLP. One of the recommendations on the law firm's website says, "I recommend Susan Necheles unreservedly for her rabbit-out-of-the-hat results." We're guessing that's the kind of results that Trump might be hoping to get from Necheles. Time will tell what she and Todd Blanche can deliver.