Generally speaking, this isn’t a good look, when your crackerjack team of lawyers decides it doesn’t want to stick around for a trial. CNN is reporting
Five of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team attorneys have stepped aside a little more than a week before his Senate trial is set to begin, according to people familiar with the case, amid a disagreement over his legal strategy.
It was a dramatic development in the second impeachment trial for Trump, who has struggled to find lawyers willing to take his case. And now, with legal briefs due next week and a trial set to begin only days later, Trump is clinging to his election fraud charade and suddenly finds himself without legal representation.–Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, who were expected to be two of the lead attorneys, are no longer on the team. A source familiar with the changes said it was a mutual decision for both to leave the legal team. As the lead attorney, Bowers assembled the team.–Josh Howard, a North Carolina attorney who was recently added to the team, has also left, according to another source familiar with the changes. Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris, also from South Carolina, are no longer involved with the case, either.
Apparently Trump wanted them to argue that there was “mass election fraud and the election was stolen from him” and not concentrate on the legal issue of convicting a *president* who has already left office.
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As stated, this isn’t a good look but the truth may be that it doesn’t really matter. The Senate is likely to acquit him again.
Is is just me wondering why various House Republicans aren’t clamoring for the opportunity to be Managers for Trump’s defense team? He needs lawyers. Good ones in fact. But there’s no Constitutional requirement that a President’s defense team in an impeachment trial in the Senate be members of any state Bar. Could it be that behind the scenes GOP leadership is freaking out trying to keep some of the crazies from turning things in the Senate into a full-blown shit-show that will ruin the GOP in the next cycle? Even Hawley and Cruz are probably having cold sweats now thinking about that prospect!
Well, Denis, we know that Hawley is trying DESPERATELY to rewrite history on how much he supported the insurrection on January 6th right now, that unamused corporate donors are cutting off ANYBODY who went along with this nonsense, that Gaetz is focusing less on this and gunning for Liz Cheney and McCarthy’s job. So…maybe?
Since the argument that there as mass fraud and the election was stolen has been definitely debunked, they’d have to focus on whether or not he actually incited the insurrection. But Trump acts like having to accept the truth about the election would cause him to disintegrate like Rumpstilskin.
“Since the argument that there as mass fraud and the election was stolen has been definitely debunked,”
It would seem that no one in Donnie’s bubble has had “the talk” with him and explained that to him in no uncertain terms, maybe because they haven’t been able to find a pantomime and/or a piano player willing to do the piece, while one or more aides lay it all out for him in excruciating detail until it takes root. I say if they get right on it, they might have a 20-25 percent chance of getting it into his thick noggin before the trail begins.
I lack your optimism, Simon (and given how often I’ve been accused of optimism, that is saying something). For a malignant narcissist like him, that truth is a bridge too far. Accepting that means he is a loser and that is no real way to become a winner in the process. He already has enough reminders of this from watching people jump ship at Mar-A-Lago and get dissed daily on TV with no Twitter account to hit back with.
Didn’t Cruz volunteer to defend Trump before the Supreme Court?
He could do so in the Senate. Or would that be too much conflict of interest? Being a co-conspirator and all?
Since when has ethics ever stopped Ted Cruz from making the absolute worst possible decision?
The tentacles reaching out in many directions pointing at complicit GOP vermin in the Capitol mob attack seem to be taking on their own flight plan … Ted from Texas is just one of several GOP names we can probably include on the soon-to-be-had defendants under investigation …
The hunched over posture these people will gain from the weight of all the evidence and of course these fiends were publicly screaming their guilt with their actions before they crawled back into their caves, so all the he said/she said crap will NOT do much to hold off responsibility and guilty charges …
Trump has and probably will continue to surround himself with houses of ill repute … the stench of these GOP lizards is ready for a pressure cleaning out of our faces …
And it will be glorious to behold. But the process will be slow, less microwavable meal and more slow cook BBQ. And bonus points, this will keep them so distracted that they won’t really have time to stop Uncle Joe’s agenda.
My surprise isn’t that the lawyers walked. It’s that they took on Mango Mussolini’s case in the first place. They HAD to know what they were getting into by now. And yet, if I had to make a bet, they lied to themselves just like all the other people taken in by Trump.
Oh and acquittal means little at this point. Guilty or not, the GOP has no good options left now that actual Nazis are the face of the party, their messaging gurus now work against them, all their corporate ties are being scrutinized and their usual response channels died with Trump’s Twitter account.
They probably thought they could get him to focus on just the trial and not get into the election. If he wants to go “election fraud and I’m the rightful president” – let him, it’s more likely to get him convicted.