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Christopher M. Kise and Alina Habba, the two lawyers who joined Donald J. Trump at the defense table before he testified Monday at his civil fraud trial in New York, represent different aspects of what the former president looks like in a defense.
Mr. Kise, a prominent attorney in Florida who was the second solicitor general in the state in the early 2000s, takes a more traditional approach, preferring to let court arguments and legal filings speak for themselves.
He took a place on the former president’s sprawling legal defense team around the time a Justice Department investigation into Mr. Trump’s post-White House handling of government documents was entering a newly aggressive phase.
Ms. Habba, by contrast, speaks often and publicly about the various cases against Mr. Trump — including the four criminal indictments he’s facing, at the state and federal levels — as emblematic of “corruption” in the country.
During the lunch break on Monday, she took aim at the judge in the case, Arthur F. Engoron, for scolding Mr. Trump for his meandering answers.
“The only thing they want are facts that are bad for Trump,” she said outside the courthouse. “That’s why he’s silencing him.”
Ms. Habba arrived on Mr. Trump’s team through one of his preferred methods of finding lawyers: either seeing them on television or meeting them through an existing business connection he has. People close to Mr. Trump have said that Ms. Habba was introduced to him at his golf club at Bedminster, NJ
The office of her eponymous law firm, Habba Madaio and Associates, is just a couple of miles away.
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