All five lawyers on former president Donald Trump’s impeachment-defense legal team have left, according to reports from CNN and the New York Times on Saturday. The news leaves Trump’s legal strategy for the trial, as well as who implements it, very much an open question one week before his already-delayed trial in the Senate is set to begin. Per the reports, the lawyers parted ways with Trump after he insisted they focus his defense on the baseless stolen-election claims he used to incite the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol (for which he is now being impeached).
One lead lawyer, Butch Bowers, left less than ten days after his hiring was announced. The other, Deborah Barbier, bailed after three. Both were based in South Carolina, as were two former prosecutors on the team, Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris. A North Carolina–based attorney named Josh Howard had also recently joined the effort. But they’re all gone now.
While Trump having some whiff of a sound defense should theoretically be necessary to secure an acquittal, there is next to no chance that enough Republican senators will decide to join the needed two-thirds of the Senate to convict him, regardless of what actually transpires during the trial. Forty-five Senate Republicans voted to dismiss the impeachment last week on the grounds it was unconstitutional to hold an impeachment trial for a president who is no longer in office (despite the fact that former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell had delayed the start of the trial until after Trump was no longer in office).
Nonetheless, the exodus of Trump’s legal team (and uncertainty about who might replace them) demonstrates that the dysfunction, disarray, and misplaced attention that plagued Trump’s single term in office hasn’t ended with his presidency, as the Times’ Maggie Haberman captured in her report on Saturday:
Mr. Trump had pushed for his defense team to focus on his baseless claim that the election was stolen from him, one person familiar with the situation said. A person close to Mr. Trump disputed that that was the case but acknowledged that there were differences in opinion about the defense strategy. However, Mr. Trump has insisted that the case is “simple” and has told advisers he could argue it himself and save the money on lawyers. (Aides contend he is not seriously contemplating doing so.)
The decision for Mr. Bowers to leave was “mutual,” another person familiar with the situation said, adding that Mr. Trump and Mr. Bowers had no chemistry, a quality the former president generally prizes in his relationships. Mr. Trump prefers lawyers who are eager to appear on television to say that he never did anything wrong; Mr. Bowers has been noticeably absent in the news media since his hiring was announced.
CNN adds that Trump “wanted the attorneys to argue there was mass election fraud and that the election was stolen from him rather than focus on the legality of convicting a president after he’s left office. Trump was not receptive to the discussions about how they should proceed in that regard.” None of the attorneys had yet been paid or signed a letter of intent, CNN reports. No other attorneys are known to be involved in the ex-president’s defense as of this weekend, and he has reportedly struggled to find willing lawyers; the team that just quit had been lined up by his longtime ally, Senator Lindsey Graham.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani — who spearheaded the Trump team’s futile post-election legal campaign to overturn President Biden’s victory, is facing a $1.3 billion lawsuit over false claims he made about Dominion Voting Systems amid that effort, and has argued that proving the stolen-election lie would exonerate the president — is apparently not going to be involved. The lawyers who defended Trump in his first impeachment trial won’t be, either.
Trump spokesperson Jason Miller said in response to the reports that the former president and his aides had “not made a final decision on our legal team,” and that new attorneys could be announced soon. Trump aides and Republican lawmakers have been trying to steer the defense strategy toward arguing the impeachment is unconstitutional, but so far it appears that Trump himself sees the trial as another opportunity to insist he didn’t lose the election. Trump and the GOP raised more than $255 million between Election Day and January 6, while the president and his many allies contested the election results (though most of the donations came in before the Electoral College voted for Biden in mid-December). It is not clear how Trump will pay for his impeachment defense, should there be one to bill him for. The RNC covered some of that cost for the first impeachment trial.
Meanwhile, Democrats do have an impeachment-trial strategy and a staff to implement it, even if the effort will just be making a case for the public and the history books, rather than immovable Senate Republicans. House impeachment managers plan to present both new video footage and eye-witness testimony of the Capitol riot, as the Washington Post reported on Friday:
The goal is to present the Senate with fresh evidence that reveals what Trump knew in advance of the Jan. 6 rampage at the Capitol, as well as how his words and actions influenced those who participated. The rioting left five dead, including one member of the U.S. Capitol Police. In addition, two officers, one with the D.C. Police Department, have since died by suicide.
The effort to present new video evidence and witness testimony appears designed to make Republican senators as uncomfortable as possible as they prepare to vote to acquit Trump, as most have indicated they will do. The prospect of injured police officers describing the brutality of pro-Trump rioters to Republicans who regularly present themselves as advocates of law enforcement could make for an extraordinary, nationally televised scene.
How much evidence House managers will be allowed to present is not entirely clear, as there has been resistance to a lengthy trial among senators on both sides of the aisle, but Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer seemed to back the House plan in an MSNBC interview this weekend.
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