President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, is overhauling his legal team again as his yearlong confrontation with the Department of Justice draws to a close. On Monday, Cohen’s lawyer turned P.R. guru, Lanny Davis, made the announcement: Guy Petrillo and Amy Lester are out, and Chicago-based attorneys Michael Monico and Barry Spevack are in.

The shake-up suggests another legal evolution for Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison last month after he pleaded guilty to multiple crimes, including campaign finance violations and lying to Congress. While he is expected to report to prison on March 6, Cohen is still cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, the Southern District of New York, and the New York Attorney General’s office. He is also scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee next month. Monico, according to a source who knows him, is a sensible choice to hold his hand through those final stages.

“It is really not that challenging to handle cooperating your client,” said the source, a Chicago-based attorney who has faced Monico in court. “Once you’ve got the deal, it more or less can be a fairly straightforward exercise. This is not the sort of thing that is going to require him to roll up his sleeves and dig into the docs and try to find a way to defend the case in court.” Although this person suggested Monico’s “best days are behind him,” he also described Cohen’s new representation as well-respected in the Chicago area, and well-equipped to guide him through conversations with Mueller. “It is more like babysitting and dealing with his questions and giving him personal advice.”

Cohen’s shifting representation has often foreshadowed new legal strategies. Shortly after his office was raided in April, Cohen hired a team from McDermott, Will & Emery to sift through the 3.7 million documents seized by the F.B.I. Later, when he began cooperating more closely with New York prosecutors, he parted ways with lead attorney Stephen Ryan and Todd Harrison, a fellow partner at the firm, and hired Southern District vets Petrillo and Lester to help guide him through the process.

All those lawyers didn’t come cheap. Cohen’s legal bills ultimately climbed into the seven figures, as my colleague Emily Jane Fox previously reported. Now, with his sentencing behind him, it appears Cohen is doing some rightsizing. It’s presumably a good deal for Monico and Spevack, too. “I think a lot of attorneys would have given a deal to Cohen in order to have the case and bring attention to yourself,” the Chicago lawyer told me.

In a joint statement, Monico and Spevack said, “We look forward to helping Mr. Cohen fulfill what he has told us is his only mission—to tell the truth as he knows it and to turn the corner on his past life and taking ownership for his past mistakes by cooperating as best as he can with all governmental authorities in search of the truth.”

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