The April 22 - May 5 issue of New York Magazine includes a cover story by features writer Andrew Rice profiling Todd Blanche, lead attorney for former president Donald Trump, who is battling various legal entanglements. For the in-depth feature, Rice interviewed Blanche, a former Democrat turned Trump defender, and spoke with Blanche’s friends and former colleagues, for a revealing portrait of a man who (unlike some of Trump’s previous lawyers) is a highly competent professional effectively taking advantage of the intricacies of the legal system on his behalf. Rice also reported from courtrooms in Florida and New York to spotlight Blanche’s efforts to combat the charges levied against Trump and keep him out of jail until after the election.
“Since last December, I have been covering all the legal proceedings surrounding Trump and his associates,” says Rice. “As the country prepared for the first-ever criminal trial of an ex-president, I started to wonder how Todd Blanche was going to defend his client — and more than that, why he was willing to give up a partnership at one of the country’s most prestigious law firms in order to take the case. What kind of a lawyer bets it all on Trump?”
The cover image is of Blanche inside the lower-Manhattan courthouse on April 16, photographed by Mark Peterson for New York Magazine.
Elsewhere in the issue, Lila Shapiro dives into the story of John Nelson, the writer behind the blog Crazy Days and Nights, who wrote Hollywood blind items that blurred the line between fact and fiction before a messy affair forced him into the spotlight.