02-01-2021, 10:33 AM
AllGold wrote:
I hope Trump is successful at getting his legal team to base his defense on election fraud.
YES ^
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...story.html
The implosion of former president Donald Trump’s legal team comes as Trump remains fixated on arguing at his second impeachment trial that the 2020 election was stolen from him, a defense that advisers warn is ill-conceived and Republican strategists fear will fuel the growing divide in the GOP.
South Carolina lawyer Karl S. “Butch” Bowers Jr. and four other attorneys who recently signed on to represent the former president abruptly parted ways with him this weekend, days before his Feb. 9 Senate trial for his role in inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol. On Sunday evening, Trump’s office announced two new lawyers were taking over his defense.
Two people familiar with the discussions preceding the departure of the original legal team said that Trump wanted them to make the case during the trial that he actually won the election. To do so would require citing his false claims of election fraud — even as his allies and attorneys have said that he should instead focus on arguing that impeaching a president who has already left office is unconstitutional.
That approach has already been embraced by many Republican senators, many of whom cited it when they cast a test vote against impeachment last week.
Nearly all GOP senators vote against impeachment trial for Trump, signaling likely acquittal
Trump’s lawyers had initially planned to center their strategy on the question of whether the proceedings were constitutional and on the definition of incitement, according to one of the people, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal conversations.
But the former president repeatedly said he wanted to litigate the voter fraud allegations and the 2020 race — and was seeking a more public defense of his actions. Bowers told Trump he couldn’t mount the defense that Trump wanted, the person said.
“It truly was mutual,” the person said. “The president wanted a different defense. The president wanted a different approach and a different team.”
Trump spokesman Jason Miller also said Sunday that the split with his lawyers was mutual but rejected the notion that the former president wants to focus on election fraud in the Senate trial, calling that account “fake news.”
“The only guidance offered has been to focus on the unconstitutional nature of the impeachment to which 45 senators have already voted in agreement,” Miller wrote in a text message.
Bowers and the other lawyers who quit Trump’s defense team did not respond to requests for comment. CNN first reported that Trump wanted his attorneys to center his defense on his claims of election fraud.
On Sunday evening, Trump’s office announced in a statement that Atlanta-based trial attorney David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor Jr., a former district attorney in Montgomery County, Pa., would lead his defense team. The two lawyers will bring “national profiles and significant trial experience in high-profile cases to the effort,” the statement said.