(Fixes typographical error in 7th paragraph to make it “violet”)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Former President Donald Trump has added former Florida Solicitor General Chris Kise to his legal team in the case involving classified documents he stored at his Mar-a-Lago club, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed a report by NBC News that Kise had been hired. Trump representatives did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
A spokesperson at Kise’s law firm confirmed Kise had left but did not say where he was going: “Foley & Lardner LLP can confirm that Christopher M. Kise, formerly a partner in our Tallahassee office, has withdrawn from the firm.”
An FBI search earlier this month at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, found numerous classified documents.
The Justice Department is investigating Trump for the unlawful retention of national defense information, a violation of the Espionage Act, and it is also investigating whether he tried to obstruct the criminal probe.
Kise has argued cases before both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court. Trump fundraiser Brian Ballard, a friend of Kise, said Kise has the type of broad experience that Trump needs.
“He’s no shrinking violet,” Ballard told Reuters.
In an unusual move last week, the Justice Department unsealed a redacted copy of the legal document that outlined the evidence it used to persuade Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart to authorize a search warrant.
It revealed that Trump had retained records pertaining to the country’s most closely guarded secrets, including those involving intelligence gathering and clandestine human sources.
The U.S. National Archives first discovered Trump had retained classified materials in January, after he returned 15 boxes of presidential records he had kept at Mar-a-Lago.
(Reporting by Steve Holland, Jacqueline Thomsen and Sarah N. Lynch; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
