FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he is appointing one of his defense attorneys in the New York hush money case as counselor to the president.

Alina Habba, 40, defended Trump earlier this year, also serving as his legal spokesperson. Habba has been spending time with the president-elect since the election at his Florida club Mar-a-Lago.

“She has been unwavering in her loyalty and unmatched in her resolve — standing with me through numerous ‘trials,’ battles and countless days in Court,” Trump posted on his social network Truth Social. “Few understand the Weaponization of the ‘Injustice’ System better than Alina.”

Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes when a New York jury in May found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.

In Trump’s first term, the position of counselor was held by Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway. Habba has Iraqi ancestry and is Chaldean, which is Iraq’s largest Christian denomination and one of the Catholic Church’s Eastern rites.

Habba frequently accompanied Trump on the campaign trail and was one of the speakers at the late October rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

On Sunday, Trump also announced he is bringing back former staffer Michael Anton to serve as director of policy planning at the State Department. Anton served as the National Security Council spokesman from 2017 to 2018.

Trump said he also will be appointing Michael Needham, a former chief of staff for Sen. Marco Rubio, as counselor of the State Department. The Florida senator was chosen by Trump to be his next secretary of state.

A group of unknown gunmen stormed the Iranian embassy in Damascus on Sunday after Islamist rebels took the city and overthrew the regime of Bashar Assad, who the Russian Foreign Ministry says fled the country and left “instructions” for a transfer of power.

Iranian state television reported on the embassy incident, saying they did not believe the gunmen were affiliated with the wider rebel group that took the city. Iran had withdrawn most of its officials and their families on Saturday, leaving only a handful of diplomats.

“It is said that the Iranian embassy was stormed alongside nearby stores by an armed group different from the group now controlling [most of] Syria,” Iranian state TV said, referring to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) which spearheaded recent rebel advances.

Arab and Iranian media have shared footage from inside the embassy’s premises, where assailants rummaged through furniture and documents inside the building and damaged some windows.

ISLAMIST REBELS IN SYRIA CATCH ASSAD, PUTIN, IRAN REGIMES OFF GUARD GIVING US NEW MIDEAST HEADACHE

Assad and his British-born wife, Asma al-Assad, fled Damascus with their three children this weekend, according to Syrian television reports. It was not known where they were headed.

A video statement from a group of men on Syrian state TV said that Assad had been overthrown and all prisoners have been set free. 

Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali said early Sunday he didn’t know the whereabouts of Assad. He told the Saudi television network Al-Arabiyya that they lost communication Saturday night.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a Telegram post Sunday that Assad left Syria following negotiations with rebel groups, and that the long-time Syrian leader had left “instructions” to “transfer power peacefully.” The Russian ministry said the Kremlin was not directly involved in those discussions.

The entrance of the Kweyris military airfield in the eastern part of Aleppo province on Dec. 3, 2024, where a portrait of  Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and a national flag have been thrown in the garbage. (Rami Al Sayed/AFP via Getty Images)

Crowds of Syrians gathered in the central squares of Damascus to celebrate the news of Assad’s departure. Some chanted anti-Assad slogans and honked horns. In other areas, celebratory gunshots rang out.

Syria has been embroiled in a bloody, nearly 14-year civil war as Islamist rebels looked to overthrow the Assad dynasty. The apparent collapse of more than 50 years of Assad family rule over the Syrian Arabian Republic is a monumental turning point in Middle East politics.

TRUMP URGES US TO STAY OUT OF SYRIAN CIVIL WAR, BLAMING OBAMA FOR FAILURE AS ISLAMISTS CLOSE IN ON CAPITAL

The overthrow of Assad in Syria presents yet another crisis in the Middle East facing the incoming Trump administration. (Getty Images)

Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the Islamist leader of HTS, who has a $10 million bounty on his head from the U.S., seeks to present a toned-down version of the radical Islamism that has defined his years of fighting in Syria and in Iraq against American troops. Al-Golani was detained by the U.S. military in the first decade of this century.

Syrian experts have told Fox News Digital that HTS seeks to impose a totalitarian Islamist regime on the population. Phillip Smyth, an expert on Iranian regime proxy groups and Syria, who is with the Atlantic Council, told Fox News Digital, “HTS is a group that is an outgrowth of Al-Qaeda and has connections to Turkey. Their endgame is to create a Taliban-esque society with a few tweaks.”

Opposition fighters remove a government flag from an official building in Salamiyah, east of Hama, Syria, Saturday Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

Al-Golani banned his fighters from opening fire into the air in Damascus. 

“Public institutions will remain under the supervision of the prime minister until they are officially handed over,” he said in a statement published on his group’s social media outlets.

Fox News’ Benjamin Weinthal, Bradford Betz, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report

Romania’s defiant far-right presidential candidate, Călin Georgescu, stood outside a closed polling station on Sunday in protest of the country’s top court’s unprecedented decision to annul the first round of the vote in which he emerged as the frontrunner.

The Constitutional Court cancelled the election on Friday after a trove of declassified intelligence alleged Russia organised a sprawling campaign across social media to promote Georgescu.

“Today is Constitution Day and there is nothing constitutional in Romania anymore. I am here in the name of democracy,” Georgescu told media in Mogosoaia, outside Bucharest.

“By cancelling democracy, our very freedom is cancelled.”

The court cited the illegal use of digital technologies including artificial intelligence, as well as undeclared sources of funding. Without naming Georgescu, the court said one candidate received “preferential treatment” on social media platforms, distorting voters’ expressed will.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said in a statement marking Constitution Day on Sunday that “We find ourselves in a moment of profound responsibility toward the values that characterise us as a nation.”

“The Romanian Constitution defines the framework within which the state and political life operate, serving as a shield against threats to democracy,” he said.

“In turbulent times, state institutions are called upon to act with calm, wisdom and respect for the law, the Constitution and democracy.”

George Simion, the 38-year-old leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, told reporters outside a closed polling station in Bucharest on Sunday that the annulment amounted to an attack against democracy, saying Iohannis should “take a step back and respect the Constitution, not mock it.”

‘TikTok Messiah’

After Georgescu unexpectedly topped the polls in the first round, his success left many political observers wondering how most local surveys had placed him behind at least five other candidates before the vote.

Many observers attributed his success to his TikTok account, which now has 6.2 million likes and 565,000 followers. But some experts suspected Georgescu’s online following was artificially inflated, while Romania’s top security body alleged he was given preferential treatment by TikTok over other candidates.

Despite being a huge outsider who declared zero campaign spending, Georgescu topped the polls in the first round on 24 November, and was due on Sunday to face reformist Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union party in a runoff.

On Friday, Lasconi also strongly condemned the court’s decision to annul the elections, saying it was “illegal, immoral, and crushes the very essence of democracy” and that the second round should have gone forward.

New dates will be set to rerun the presidential vote from scratch.