Donald Trump names new lawyers to lead impeachment defence
- Both lawyers have been involved in high-profile criminal cases
- Trump to file a response to the impeachment charges on Tuesday
The two representing Trump will be defence lawyer David Schoen, a frequent television legal commentator, and Bruce Castor, a former district attorney in Pennsylvania who was criticised for his decision to not charge actor Bill Cosby in a sex crimes case.
Both lawyers issued statements through Trump’s office saying that they were honoured to take the job.
“The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history. It is strong and resilient. A document written for the ages, and it will triumph over partisanship yet again, and always,” said Castor, who served as district attorney for Montgomery County, outside Philadelphia, from 2000 to 2008.
The announcement on Sunday was intended to promote a sense of stability surrounding the Trump defence team as his impeachment trial nears. Several South Carolina lawyers had been set to represent him at the trial, which starts the week of February 8.
Trump, the first president in American history to be impeached twice, is set to stand trial in the Senate on a charge that he incited his supporters to storm Congress on January 6 as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
Republicans and Trump aides have made clear that they intend to make a simple argument in the trial: Trump’s trial is unconstitutional because he is no longer in office.
Forty-five Senate Republicans backed a failed effort last week to halt Trump’s impeachment trial, in a show of party unity that some cited as a clear sign Trump will not be convicted of inciting insurrection at the Capitol.
“The Democrats’ efforts to impeach a president who has already left office is totally unconstitutional and so bad for our country,” Trump adviser Jason Miller has said.
Many legal scholars say there is no bar to an impeachment trial despite Trump having left the White House. One argument is that state constitutions that predate the US Constitution allowed impeachment after officials left office. The Constitution’s drafters also did not specifically bar the practice.
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Trump supporters storm US Capitol, interrupting Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory
Castor, a Republican who was the elected district attorney of Pennsylvania’s third-most populated county, decided against charging Cosby in an alleged 2004 sexual encounter. He ran for the job again in 2015, and his judgment in the Cosby case was a key issue used against him by the Democrat who defeated him.
Castor has said that he personally thought Cosby should have been arrested, but that the evidence wasn’t strong enough to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
In 2004, Castor ran for state attorney general unsuccessfully. In 2016, he became the top lieutenant to the state’s embattled attorney general – Kathleen Kane, a Democrat – as she faced charges of leaking protected investigative information to smear a rival and lying to a grand jury about it. She was convicted, leaving Castor as the state’s acting attorney general for a few days.
Schoen met with financier Jeffrey Epstein about joining his defence team on sex trafficking charges just days before Epstein killed himself in a New York jail. In an interview with the Atlanta Jewish Times last year, Schoen said he had been approached by Trump associate Roger Stone before Stone’s trial and was later retained to handle his appeal. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence and then pardoned him.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg and Reuters
