Trump is asking his lawyer Alina Habba to act as an adviser to the president

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) – President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he is appointing one of his defense lawyers in the New York hush money case as counsel to the president.

Alina Habba, 40, defended Trump earlier this year, and also served as his legal representative. Habba has spent time with the president-elect since the election at his Florida club Mar-a-Lago.

“She has been unwavering in her loyalty and unsurpassed in her determination – standing with me through numerous ‘trials,’ battles and countless days in court,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social social network. “Few understand the weaponization of the ‘injustice’ System better than Alina.”

Trump became the first former US president convicted of a serious crime when a New York jury in May found him guilty of all 34 counts in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn star who said the two had sex.

In Trump’s first term, the position of adviser was held by Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway. Habba has Iraqi ancestry and is Chaldean, which is Iraq’s largest Christian denomination and one of the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church.

Habba often accompanied Trump on the campaign trail and was one of the speakers at the late October rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

On Sunday, Trump also announced that he is bringing back former staffer Michael Anton to serve as director of policy planning at the State Department. Anton served as spokesperson for the National Security Council from 2017 to 2018.

Trump said he will also name Michael Needham, a former chief of staff to Sen. Marco Rubio, as an adviser to the State Department. The senator from Florida was chosen by Trump to be his next secretary of state.