Philip C. Johnston

I have lived in South Florida for the past twenty years. After earning my law degree from Columbia Law School in New York City in 2000, I spent two years clerking for a federal judge in Miami and then worked at the international law firm Skadden, Arps in Manhattan, focusing on white-collar criminal defense. I am licensed to practice in Florida and New York. Prior to becoming an attorney, I worked as a foreign correspondent for United Press International, covering political affairs, including the Kremlin, Boris Yeltsin's win in the 1996 presidential election and the war in Chechnya. I speak Russian. In 2018, I established my own criminal defense practice in West Palm Beach, Florida. Since that time, I have had criminal charges dismissed for a wide array of clients, including doctors, lawyers, hedge-fund managers and construction workers. Recently, I secured the dismissal of a felony Battery on a Law Enforcement Officer charge against a young woman after filing a sworn Motion to Dismiss. The woman had been falsely arrested for DUI and was brutally beaten in custody by three corrections officers the same night. Despite clear video evidence showing the officers using excessive force, she was formally charged with a felony carrying a mandatory conviction. After her criminal charges were dropped, all three officers were arrested and are now being prosecuted for aggravated battery. The case garnered national attention when the officers were booked into the Broward County jail where they committed the assault. I have had charges dismissed at trial, ranging from petit theft to second degree murder, and played a high-profile role in the controversy surrounding whether former President Donald Trump was legally entitled to live at Mar-a-Lago under the terms of a 1993 Use Agreement signed with the Town of Palm Beach.