Former President Trump has parted ways with his lead impeachment lawyers just over a week before his Senate trial is set to begin, two people familiar with the situation said Saturday. Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, both South Carolina lawyers, are no longer with Trump’s defense team....Greg Harris and Johnny Gasser, two former federal prosecutors from South Carolina, are also off the team, one of the people said.
According to a different person with knowledge of the legal hires, Bowers and Barbier left the team because Trump wanted them to use a defense that relied on allegations of election fraud, and the lawyers were not willing to do so....Trump has struggled to find attorneys willing to defend him after becoming the first president in history to be impeached twice....After numerous attorneys who defended him previously declined to take on the case, Trump was introduced to Bowers by one of his closest allies in the Senate, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Jokes aside, this shows that Trump understands what Bowers didn't: this isn't a trial, it's a TV show. Trump knows that his control over the Republican Party is still strong enough that he faces no chance of conviction, which means that legal arguments are unnecessary. Instead, he wants this to be a nationally televised opportunity for him to persuade the public that the 2020 election was teeming with Democratic fraud that cheated him out of reelection. He will, of course, be aided in this via coverage from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and all the rest of the right-wing media empire. I predict high ratings.
No. Bowers understands that Trump wants him to go on national television and spew obvious bullshit in front of the whole world. Bowers is actually a competent, respectable lawyer. Can't blame him for not wanting to get the Trump stain on himself. Although personally, I think the real reason is more likely that Trump was already starting to renege on the payment agreement...
A "competent, respectable lawyer" introduced by Lindsey Graham ? Yeah, right.
Trump reneging on the money is way more like it.
GrueBleen: I understand your skepticism, but for real, Bowers is a very good lawyer, and I think the fact that he pulled out of Trump's defense shows he's also respectable.
Clearly he's a good enough lawyer not to allow himself to become involved in that kind of clown show.
But evidently he's NOT a good enough lawyer to have seen ahead of time that this was exactly (utterly predictably IMO) what would happen.
So, a cheer and a half.
My vote would be on the stupidly forgot to get paid up front and is now pretty sure that he's going to be working for free explanation. The assumption that he pulled out because he was being asked to argue that the election was stolen is simply untenable. He knew who Trump was when he signed on.
Well I know him not, LJ, so I'll accept you judgement, pro tem. But I reckon I also concur with bbleh - was Bowers completely ignorant, or possibly self-deluded, about Trump ?
For Trump, it's a TV show. For Bowers, it's an opportunity to lie under oath, rendering him liable to disbarment if not worse.
Lawyers do not typically testify at trials. They’re not permitted to present knowingly false evidence or testimony. And for that, yes, a non-elite lawyer could theoretically be disbarred, although even that is rare.
Also, after following the various Trump and Trump-adjacent lawsuits, I don’t think any of the witnesses called by the Trump lawyers could be prosecuted for perjury because they were testify about conspiracy theories or conjectures. It’s why Trump’s lawyers submitted reams and reams of what were essentially rants by various randos but, if memory serves, nobody who qualified as either an expert (with the exception of the guy who said UPS rigged the election or the apparently intoxicated lady from SNL).
Trump is throwing out the lawyers who were going to make the argument that the trial is unconstitutional (that republicans are using as their deflection), and instead going with "they stole the election and the mob was the remedy!" defense. This could be a Queeg and the strawberries moment.
If Trump insists on litigating the proposition that "the election was stolen" in the impeachment trial, then that question is entered into the proceedings and we could have a a fact trial on that. Witnesses before Congress are sworn in, as they are in a regular court. Witnesses cannot lie, because there are severe penalties for lying. Trump's pathologies are making this very very interesting.
It's just possible that he is doing this as a display of dominance over the GOP. Force them to acquit as he presents a case that says he incited the mob because the election was stolen.
The perjury danger might influence some potential witnesses, but a charge of perjury would have to be tried in front of a jury in a criminal trial, and the problem of getting an objective jury would apply (see my other comment). Also it has to be proven that the lying was deliberate.
I think you're right that Trump's essentially bullying the GOP into granting him both a unimaginably powerful public forum to air his grievances and he is forcing them into accepting and ratifying his attempt to overthrow the government. But there's a couple of things I think you've overlooked.
The first is that unless Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi can be bullied into allowing Trump to simply air his grievances with the election, there's no reason to believe that any more than a brief statement of Trump's grievances would be permitted by the presiding officer (the president pro tempore of the Senate). To allow Trump to present the "stolen" election as a defense is to accept that insurrection and treason are justifiable . I cannot imagine that the Democrats would be that feckless.
The second is that your belief that anyone associated with the Republican Party is being deterred by fear of consequences. There are no consequences for conservatives. Just in the post-Trump era we've had a consequences free insurrection in which the rebels were permitted to storm the Congress and hunt for "traitors" to be executed. Rudy and Co. have filed approximately 80 totally insane, completely unfounded lawsuits without being sanctioned even one. Clearly, this isn't something conservatives are likely to worry about. I think the more likely explanation for his lawyers quitting is that he's refusing to pay them.
*****If Trump insists on litigating the proposition that "the election was stolen" in the impeachment trial, then that question is entered into the proceedings and we could have a a fact trial on that. Witnesses before Congress are sworn in, as they are in a regular court. Witnesses cannot lie, because there are severe penalties for lying.*****
C'mon, get real, man. The MAGA base at best has a highly tenuous grasp of reality and/or they don't care about reality (when it reflects negatively on their God-Emperor). Any witnesses who contradict the Approved Narrative will be written off by tens of millions of MAGAts as liars, or as dupes of the Deep State. Plus, the fact that Democrats now control the process (Senate majority) is convenient for Trumpists, in that they can claim the fix is in. Kevin's 100% correct here: it's politics.
Isn't arguing that because the election was stolen he had no choice but to release the mob on Congress far more dangerous for him?
This is basically Stalin being tried by the politburo for being insufficiency ruthless. It barely qualifies as a farce. Trump could take a massive dump in the well of the senate and not lose a single Republican vote (except Romney).
**Isn't arguing that because the election was stolen he had no choice but to release the mob on Congress far more dangerous for him?**
His lawyers won't admit Trump "released the mob" on Congress. Rather, they'll claim that the mob was understandably really, really angry at having the election stolen from them, and that Trump isn't responsible for any of their actions (his words before the attack were simply a non-violent, standard-issue political talk).
This would probably also apply to a criminal trial. Actually convicting Trump would depend on who gets on the jury, not really on any evidence presented. Since Trumpistas make up 47% of the overall jury pool it would be very hard to empanel a jury without one (chances of about 1 in 2000 for random selection). If they paid attention to evidence they wouldn't have voted for Trump.
I don’t think Trump’s going to be charged criminally because of the strong norm against prosecuting elites generally and former presidents specifically. But if he were to be prosecuted, your estimate about the jury pool is incorrect. The two most probable venues for a trial would be Washington DC and Manhattan (because that’s where the crimes took place). It’s very unlikely that there would be any Trump voters in his jury venire.
Lawyers risk their license for suborning perjury, which Tr***is demanding they do. Oh, and of course he was already stuffing them on payment.
Perhaps in the abstract there might be some very minor risk, but we've seen over a dozen Republican lawyer filed almost 80 different lawsuits all over the country. All but one (which was dismissed on appeal) were dismissed by a variety of trial and appellate courts are completely baseless and as lacking due diligence in preparation for filing a complaint. In some cases, the judges have been a bit snippy but exactly zero lawyers have been sanctioned and even fewer have been disbarred.
The American public saw four years of Trump and rejected him. Trump ran behind most of the Republican Congressional candidates. I suspect the Republicans doubling down on this loser will be a big mistake.
Yes, so hoping that this is the key to the next midterms - & maybe 2024, as well.
As much as I hope for a conviction on impeachment, he HAS been impeached twice, & if he is prevented from running for office again by the Kaine resolution, it would be enough.
Although it would be appreciated if comments-in-progress showed in black, rather than this orange-red shade.
It's a TV show for the Trump rubes. For the rest of us, impeachment matters. When you see evil, you point it out so that your friends can better avoid it.