A day before former President Donald J. Trump was to surrender to face charges stemming from a hush-money payment, he added a new lawyer to his defense team, a former federal prosecutor with wide experience in white-collar cases.
The lawyer, Todd Blanche, will work with Susan R. Necheles and Joseph Tacopina, who have been representing Mr. Trump in the investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office that led to an indictment that is expected to be unsealed on Tuesday when Mr. Trump is arraigned.
Mr. Trump has denied wrongdoing and is expected to plead not guilty when he appears in court.
Mr. Blanche, 48, has a reputation as an aggressive but measured advocate as well as ties to Mr. Trump’s legal team. He represents Boris Epshteyn, a top adviser to Mr. Trump who is said to have told people he thought Mr. Blanche was the right choice to represent the former president, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Blanche also represented Paul D. Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, after the Manhattan district attorney’s office indicted Mr. Manafort on charges of mortgage fraud and other state felonies in 2019.
The state charges were similar to those on which Mr. Manafort was found guilty in federal court in 2018 — a conviction for which he received a pardon from Mr. Trump. The state charges were thrown out on double jeopardy grounds, the prohibition against charging someone twice for the same crime.
Mr. Blanche’s other clients have included Igor Fruman, a Soviet-born former associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s who pleaded guilty in 2021 and was sentenced to 366 days in prison on a count of soliciting a political contribution from a foreign donor.
Mr. Blanche declined to comment on Monday. He has resigned from the law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, a firm spokesman confirmed on Monday, declining further comment. Mr. Blanche joined Cadwalader, where he was a partner, in 2017.
Ms. Necheles said on Monday, “Todd is an excellent lawyer, and I am thrilled that he has joined the team.”
In addition to working in private practice, Mr. Blanche spent nearly a decade as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he tried and supervised white-collar cases and was co-chief of the unit that investigates violent crimes.
He earned his law degree at Brooklyn Law School, where he studied at night while working full-time as a paralegal in the Southern District office.
Mr. Trump’s other lawyers — Ms. Necheles and Mr. Tacopina — have long experience representing high-profile clients in New York’s state and federal courts. Both also have ties to Mr. Trump.
Ms. Necheles was one of the lawyers who represented Mr. Trump’s business, the Trump Organization, in a state court trial in Manhattan last year that resulted in the company’s conviction on felony tax fraud and other charges. The judge in that case, Juan M. Merchan, who imposed a $1.61 million criminal penalty on the corporation, is expected to oversee Mr. Trump’s criminal case as well.
Ms. Necheles has represented defendants in major organized-crime and public-corruption cases. A graduate of Yale Law School, she also once worked as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn.
Mr. Tacopina, who is also a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney, has represented clients like Michael Jackson, Sean Hannity, Don Imus and Alex Rodriguez, according to his firm’s website.
He currently represents Mr. Trump in a federal lawsuit filed last year by E. Jean Carroll, a writer who has accused Mr. Trump of raping her in a Fifth Avenue department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. Mr. Trump has denied the allegation and a trial is scheduled for later this month.
Mr. Tacopina has defended Mr. Trump aggressively on television. On Sunday, he said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Mr. Trump’s case was one of “political persecution,” and that he would not have been indicted had he not been running for president. Chad Seigel, one of Mr. Tacopina’s partners, has also been working on Mr. Trump’s defense.
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.