Michael Foote is a New York immigration attorney, writer and legal commentator, not, as some entertainment coverage of The Traitors: New Blood has described him, a criminal-defense lawyer. His legal career has centered on immigrant-rights advocacy, including work assisting immigrant minors facing deportation, and he has built a public platform explaining legal issues to a general audience, through a podcast and a large social media following.
Foote studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College before earning his law degree at Tulane, and was admitted to the New York bar in 2015. He has spent much of his career since then bridging law and storytelling, first through immigration advocacy work, and later through media commentary and his podcast, Brief Recess.
That combination, arguing on behalf of people whose situations are often urgent and contested, then explaining the law to a general audience, is the real throughline Foote brings into The Traitors: New Blood, not the courtroom-thriller image some pre-season coverage has suggested.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Michael Charles Foote (public name: Michael Foote) |
| Age | 38, per Deadline’s reporting |
| Birthplace | Not publicly confirmed |
| Current location | New York City |
| Occupation | Immigration attorney, writer, podcast host and legal commentator |
| Undergraduate | Sarah Lawrence College (creative writing) |
| Law school | Tulane University Law School |
| Bar admission | New York, admitted 2015; no other jurisdictions confirmed |
| Legal work | American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign; Safe Passage Project; associated with the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center |
| Traitors role | Contestant, The Traitors: New Blood; Faithful (banished in Episode 6) |
Early Life and Education
Public information about Foote’s childhood, family background and hometown is limited. His hometown is listed as New York, New York in his Traitors cast materials, though his birthplace has not been independently confirmed.
He studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, a path he has said originally pointed him toward intellectual property or copyright law rather than the immigration and advocacy work that would come to define his career. He went on to law school at Tulane University, and was admitted to the New York bar in 2015.
Legal Career: Immigration Law and Advocacy
Foote’s legal career has been built around immigration law rather than criminal defense. In a 2025 interview with The Cut, he described initially considering copyright and intellectual-property work before shifting toward immigration law and immigrant-rights advocacy.
His documented legal work includes involvement with the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign, and he has volunteered his legal expertise with Safe Passage Project, which provides legal assistance to immigrant minors facing deportation, according to The New York Times. He has also been associated with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU, though the public record does not detail his specific role or caseload with those organizations.
Foote has also built a substantial public platform as a legal commentator. He co-hosts a weekly podcast, Brief Recess, with Mélissa Malebranche, and reportedly runs a TikTok account with several hundred thousand followers, where he explains legal concepts, including criminal-law topics, to a general audience, commentary work that is likely the source of some entertainment coverage mistakenly describing him as a criminal-defense attorney. He has also appeared in media discussions of immigration cases, including 2025 coverage of the Mahmoud Khalil matter, as a commentator rather than as counsel of record.
The public record does not establish a documented criminal-defense caseload, a number of trials or jury trials, or any specific homicide, violent-crime or white-collar defense work, so none of that is claimed here.
What His Legal Work Teaches Him About People
Foote’s legal and advocacy work involves constructing persuasive arguments from evidence supplied by people whose situations are often urgent, emotional and contested, and distinguishing credible accounts from incomplete or stereotyped narratives. His creative-writing background may also give him a sharper sense of how a story is built and where it doesn’t hold together.
Those are real, transferable skills, but they are not the same as courtroom cross-examination or criminal-defense interrogation, and the public record does not support describing Foote as an expert lie detector or professional interrogator. The more accurate framing is that his work has trained him to organize competing accounts and build a case, skills that could plausibly help him at the round table, though this is an editorial inference rather than something Foote has said directly about his own strategy.
Personal Life
Foote is married to Bradley Sherburne; The New York Times reported the couple married on September 28, 2019. They live together in New York City with their dog. Foote has spoken about his identity as an openly gay immigration lawyer in past interviews.
Outside of law, Foote is a writer. He is reportedly working on his first novel, described in one account as a comedy centered on a peeping Tom disrupting a small town, though that detail comes from a single source and has not been independently confirmed.
On social media, Foote’s Instagram handle is reported by podcast listings (toppodcast.com) and cast coverage as @dept_of_redundancy_dept, but older radio.net listings show @michael_foote__ on Instagram, so the handle may have changed and is presented here as reported rather than verified. His TikTok is listed as @michael_foote_. His podcast, Brief Recess (Exactly Right Media), continues to release weekly during the season; the September 24, 2026 episode with Clay Aiken discussed his Traitors experience (per ca.radio.net).
Michael Foote on The Traitors: New Blood
Foote is one of 22 civilian contestants on The Traitors: New Blood, part of a season NBC and Peacock have said drew more than 80,000 applicants overall. His casting was announced on his own podcast, Brief Recess, where the show’s social accounts framed his casting with a pun connecting his legal career to the game: “Will he uphold the law, or get away with murder?”
A similar line, “I’m the only person who has ever stepped foot in that castle who knows exactly how to get away with murder,” has circulated in cast coverage. Sourcing on where exactly that line originated, and what it’s meant to imply, is inconsistent: some coverage frames it as Foote’s own joke about representing people accused of murder at trial, while other material frames it as promotional wordplay from his podcast’s casting announcement rather than a claim about his actual legal caseload. No reliable source documents Foote personally handling a murder-defense case, so the line is best read as a pun on the game’s premise rather than a factual claim about his legal history.
His self-declared cast superlative is “Most Likely to Stand on Business.” Michael played as a Faithful. He was banished in Episode 6 after his own Dolls alliance turned on him, the fourth consecutive wrong banishment. For the full cast list, see The Traitors: New Blood Cast, and once the season airs, results will be tracked on The Traitors: New Blood Episodes.
Michael Foote’s Gameplay
Through the first four episodes, Foote has been one of the season’s most vocal players. At the Episode 2 Round Table, NBC confirms that “Lawyer Michael Foote opened the floor with a question about what everybody thought about Victor Vollbrechthausen, Madeline Kostopulos, and Abby Lee going after Shields during the first Mission to protect themselves,” a move that turned the table against Victor.
In the Episode 3 crypt mission, Alan Cumming paired him with Ben McDonnell (“Ben and Michael, bounding into my third crypt like two gay Lara Crofts,” per realityblurred). The pair chose the Traitor clue over money: “Last night two players battled in plain sight to become a traitor.” Foote declared to the group, “Traitors, we’re coming for your wigs, and we’ll snatch them!” (realityblurred).
EW’s exit interview with Arisa Thomas confirms that Foote and Ben surfaced the clue, which really referred to Accomplices Xavier Scruggs and Katie Fites. But Foote misread it: he told his van and others that Arisa’s handholding “truth test” with Victor was “exactly what the clue said happened,” saying, “They like held hands and did this ritual ceremony… she was anointed a traitor in that moment.” At the Round Table, he called it “something that was a potential recruitment,” even though the clue said nothing about recruitment (realityblurred). He told Arisa directly: “it’s because you’re a traitor, babe” (realityblurred).
Foote received 1 vote at the Arisa banishment, which ended 13-5-1 (per the tvgrapevine recap); the voter has not been verified.
Suspicion has also turned on Foote himself. Before her banishment, Arisa told EW: “I really thought Michael was a Traitor because he is a lawyer, and then you saw at the first Roundtable how he commanded the Roundtable… ‘Whoa, why wasn’t Michael murdered?'” In his EW exit interview, Xavier Scruggs said Foote would have been his first murder pick as a Traitor: “he’s gonna sniff somebody out quickly… He was honest upfront, very trustworthy. He was putting himself out there, even in conversations you don’t see on camera.” At the Episode 4 Round Table, Victor Vollbrechthausen asked why the smart lawyer had not been murdered; Traitor Joe Vanella publicly defended Foote, endorsing him as a Faithful and saying tearfully in an interview, “I don’t want him to think any part of that was deceptive” (realityblurred).
Foote was one of seven players safe from murder in the Episode 4 “Death Parade” mission (realityblurred).
In Episode 5, Foote showed independent thinking on the Katie Fites question, saying the theory that she is a Traitor deserves attention when others dismissed it.
Episode 6 ended his game. At the Round Table, Victor Vollbrechthausen laid out his FruitGate theory, correctly connecting the cursed-apple murder to Joe Vanella and Tomica Adams, but the room dismissed it. Katie Fites questioned Foote’s fearlessness, and Katie, Clyde Moser, Ben McDonnell and Abbey Benjamin pushed a theory that Foote had been recruited as a Traitor. His only defense was pointing back at Victor, and the votes piled up: Foote was banished 8-3-3-1 (Wyatt Gillespie received 3 votes, Victor Vollbrechthausen received 3, Tomica Adams received 1) and revealed as a Faithful, the fourth consecutive wrong banishment. His parting words: “I’ll see you in court. Because I’m a faithful.” The episode also collapsed his “Dolls” alliance with Ben McDonnell, Abbey Benjamin and Clyde Moser, who all voted to banish him.
He received eight of 15 votes. Victor and Wyatt each received three, and Tomica received one. Dolls members Clyde Moser, Ben McDonnell and Abbey Benjamin all voted against him, believing he had started as a Faithful but been recruited as a Traitor. ‘I don’t forgive and I don’t forget,’ he said after his banishment. ‘I’m still mad. I’m still coming for their f***ing wigs… I am suing every person who voted for me at that Roundtable.’ He was surprised to learn Katie and Tomica had been talking behind his back at the castle, something he only discovered three months after filming ended. His parting words were ‘I’ll see you in court.’
Where Michael Foote Stands Now
Foote’s game ended in Episode 6, banished 8-3-3-1 at the Round Table and revealed as a Faithful. His path ran from a creative-writing student who thought he might end up doing copyright law, to an immigration attorney working on behalf of people facing deportation, to a podcaster and legal commentator explaining the law to a general audience. The Traitors: New Blood was a new kind of public stage for him, one built on argument, narrative and reading people rather than statutes, and his exit, as the Faithfuls’ fourth consecutive wrong banishment, showed the limits of that stage: he read Katie Fites correctly, but could not turn being right into votes.
FAQs
Who is Michael Foote?
Michael Foote is a New York immigration attorney, writer and legal commentator, and a contestant on The Traitors: New Blood.
What does Michael Foote do?
He practices immigration law, co-hosts the podcast Brief Recess, and is a legal commentator with a large social media following.
Is Michael Foote a criminal defense attorney?
No. Despite some entertainment coverage describing him that way, the public record supports immigration law, not criminal defense, as his practice area. His social media commentary does cover criminal-law topics for a general audience, which may explain the mislabeling.
Where does Michael Foote practice law?
He is admitted to practice in New York, where he has worked on immigration matters, including with the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign and Safe Passage Project.
What type of lawyer is Michael Foote?
An immigration attorney, with a career focused on immigrant-rights advocacy rather than criminal defense.
Where did Michael Foote go to law school?
Tulane University Law School. He studied creative writing as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College.
What cases has Michael Foote handled?
The public record documents his general involvement in immigrant-rights advocacy and assistance for immigrant minors facing deportation, but does not identify specific named cases or a litigation record that can be published as a résumé.
Why did Michael Foote join The Traitors?
His casting was announced through his own podcast. Available material doesn’t detail his personal motivations beyond his public identity as a lawyer and commentator.
Is Michael Foote a Faithful or Traitor?
He was a Faithful, revealed when he was banished in Episode 6 with 8 votes at the Round Table. The confirmed Traitors are Joe Vanella, Tomica Adams, and Katie Fites.
What did Michael Foote say about getting away with murder?
A version of that line has circulated in cast coverage, but sources disagree on whether it originated as Foote’s own joke or as promotional wordplay from his podcast’s casting announcement. No reliable source confirms he has represented anyone accused of murder in an actual case.
