WASHINGTON
A husband-and-wife legal team from Miami is joining President Donald Trump’s personal legal team in the special counsel's Russia investigation.
Jane Serene Raskin and Marty Raskin, two former federal prosecutors and veteran defense lawyers who have a private practice in Coral Gables, are joining Trump’s team along with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
“Jane and Marty are highly respected former federal prosecutors with decades of experience. They have a nationwide practice and reputation for excellence and integrity,” Trump’s personal attorney, Jay Sekulow, said in a statement Thursday.
The two are widely respected defense lawyers in Miami who have represented many high-profile white collar cases, including federal immigration agents suspected of extorting money from drug kingpins, mob suspects, and a contractor tied to the 1996 ValuJet plane crash in the Everglades.
He served as the criminal chief for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami and was a finalist for the top job. She prosecuted organized crime cases for the Justice Department and served as the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. They met at an American Bar Association conference in New Orleans and married in 1990.
Reached by email, Marty Raskin declined an interview and directed questions to Sekulow.
Theodore Olson, who served as solicitor general in President George W. Bush’s administration, reportedly turned down an offer to join the team citing “chaos” and “turmoil,” according to multiple reports.
The Raskins are the second husband-and-wife legal duo to be considered to represent Trump against special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election. Last month, Sekulow announced that conflicts prevented veteran Washington lawyers Joe diGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, from joining Trump’s legal team.
David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami where the Raskins once worked, said the Raskins are very well respected lawyers with a “ton of experience in federal court.”
“You hire them to come in and get the job done and not make a lot of noise about it,” Weinstein said.
Weinstein said the community of former federal prosecutors in Miami is small and it was known that the Raskins supported Trump. He was not surprised they were picked, but found it curious that Trump would pick lawyers from South Florida as opposed to New York or Washington.
“It raises the question that he might be looking at vulnerabilities in South Florida,” Weinstein said.
Email: fordonez@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @francoordonez.
This story was originally published April 19, 2018 7:42 PM.