An attorney helping Donald Trump’s embattled campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, fight a battery charge previously resigned from his Justice Department post after allegations surfaced that he bit a dancer at a south Florida strip club.
Kendall Coffey, who was the U.S. attorney in Miami from 1993 to 1996, resigned just one day after being called to Washington to meet with then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, according to the Sun-Sentinel.
After racking up a $900 bill at the Lipstik Club in south Miami-Dade County, Coffey allegedly bit a stripper known only as “Tiffany” during a dispute. He paid the bill with a credit card before being kicked out of the club, according to the Miami Herald. The paper also reported Coffey’s father later bought back the credit card slip for $1,200 in an attempt to conceal his alleged involvement.
While the woman and her husband told the Sentinel at the time the bite was hard enough to break the skin, they said they didn’t want to end his political career.
The Sentinel also reported Coffey went to the strip club because he was feeling “despondent” about a recent high-profile acquittal of two men charged with smuggling $2 billion of cocaine into the country over 13 years.
Coverage of that earlier incident bubbled up after the Trump campaign said Tuesday in a statement that Coffey would represent Lewandowski in Miami.
Coffey has handled a number of other high-profile cases since he left the U.S. attorney’s office. In 2000, he was the attorney for former Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore in Florida as his campaign battled for a recount.
Months earlier, Coffey helped broker a settlement in the case of Elián González, a young Cuban boy whose family custody battle became a flashpoint for relations between the U.S. and Cuba.
