Hours before he surrendered at the Fulton County Jail, Donald Trump announced he was hiring a new attorney to lead his Atlanta legal team. The former president is facing 13 felony charges in Fulton County, among them violating the state’s anti-racketeering law in an effort to subvert the state’s 2020 election results,
Here is what you need to know about Steve Sadow:
He was born in Ohio: Sadow grew up in Trotwood, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton and he played football as a middle linebacker. He attended Marietta College. (That’s in Marietta, Ohio, not Marietta, Georgia) and worked at a local pool hall for a dollar an hour. That helped him to become his college’s billiards champion. Sadow came to Atlanta to attend Emory Law School and stayed after graduation.
He’s never been a prosecutor: Unlike some defense attorneys who begin their careers as local or federal prosecutors, Sadow has spent his entire career doing criminal defense work. In a 2015 interview, Sadow said when he was 11 years old he had an epiphany while watching “The Defenders” on an old black-and-white television. “I turned to my father and said, ‘That’s what I want to do. I want to be a criminal defense lawyer,’” he said in the interview with Georgia Super Lawyers magazine.
Sadow’s wife is also a lawyer: Susan Sadow is a well-known workers’ compensation attorney in Atlanta. Like her husband, she gradated from Emory Law School. Her website says that she has successfully settled thousands of workers’ compensation cases, a dozen of them for more than $1 million.
Credit: Michael Blackshire
Credit: Michael Blackshire
His clients are often high-profile: Sadow has represented musicians Usher, Rick Ross and T.I. among others. He has also played a key role in some of Atlanta’s most sensational cases. In the 2000 murder trial of NFL linebacker Ray Lewis, Sadow represented co-defendant Jeffrey Sweeting. Sweeting was acquitted in the double slaying, which happened after a night of post-Super Bowl partying in Buckhead. He was lead counsel in the federal racketeering case involving the Gold Club, the now-defunct strip club where sports stars received sexual favors. His client, club owner Steve Kaplan, entered a guilty plea and in 2002 was sentenced to 16 months in federal prison.
He’s familiar with Georgia’s RICO law: One Sadow’s recent clients was the rapper Gunna, who was facing charges in another RICO case in Fulton County. Gunna, whose real name is Sergio Kitchens, entered a negotiated guilty plea with the state that allowed him to suspend additional jail time and maintain his innocence in exchange for pleading guilty to one count of violating RICO. In a 2021 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sadow said that RICO was “overused” by Georgia prosecutors.
Style Watch: When Sadow came to federal court on Monday, Aug. 28 to sit in on Mark Meadows’ removal hearing he was sporting a pair of grey ostrich cowboy boots with a suit and no tie. Cowboy boots are something of a trademark for Sadow. He said he has 22 pairs.
