click to enlarge - File: Caleb Kenna
- Brady Toensing
The
New York Times reported Monday that President Donald Trump
plans to hire Joseph diGenova to represent him in the special counsel probe of Russian election meddling.
DiGenova, a prominent Washington, D.C.-based attorney, is the stepfather and law partner of Vermont Republican Party vice chair Brady Toensing. The
Times report did not indicate whether Toensing or his mother and law partner, Victoria Toensing, would also represent the president.
Brady Toensing, who chaired Trump's 2016 Vermont campaign and lives in Charlotte, declined to comment Monday on whether he would be involved.
According to the
Times report, which was attributed to three unnamed sources, Trump has not formally announced the hiring and could still change his mind. It said that diGenova would not play a "a lead role" but would be "a more aggressive player on the president’s legal team." DiGenova and his wife, who have also represented Blackwater founder Erik Prince and former Trump campaign chair Sam Clovis, are best known for their conspiratorial appearances on the Fox News channel.
Toensing has made plenty of headlines on his own in Vermont.
A January 2016 complaint he filed with the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation led to a long-running Federal Bureau of Investigation of Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) wife, Jane O'Meara Sanders. A pair of complaints he filed
in April and
May 2015, based on reporting by
Seven Days, led to
the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate then-attorney general Bill Sorrell, a Democrat.
Read
Seven Days' July 2017 profile of Toensing
here.