COLOMBIA – More than a decade ago, when Republican politicians in South Carolina faced a frightening legal threat, there was a name at the top of their list of people to call: Butch Bowers.
Columbia’s attorney defended governors, lawmakers, state party leaders and other household names across Palmetto, achieving victory after victory in a wide range of risky situations.
Now Bowers, 55, must take on by far the most important case of his career: the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump in the Senate.
At the suggestion of US Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C., Trump added Bowers to his legal team this week, as he prepares to defend himself against charges that he incited a US Capitol insurrection on January 6, when supporters of his invaded the building because of unfounded claims that the presidential election was “stolen”.
Lawyers and political figures from across Bowers’ home state, including longtime allies and regular opponents of the court, say Trump could hardly find a more capable lawyer to defend his case.
“I’ve been litigating for 40 years and he’s one of the best lawyers I’ve ever faced,” said State Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Columbia.
Veteran ethics watchdog John Crangle, who often has the opposite view of Bowers in high profile disputes involving SC politicians, said Bowers’ clients “got the best quality person they can get for this type of work in Carolina South and the most experienced in doing this – and the most successful. “
Robert Goings, a first-rate lawyer in Columbia, has worked with and against Bowers in cases over the years. Now, whenever possible, Goings said he always tries to side with Bowers because he considers him “a winner”.
Bowers will have two weeks to prepare for the impeachment trial scheduled to begin on February 9, where he is expected to lend a firm hand to a former president often surrounded by turmoil.
“If Donald Trump had hired Butch Bowers four years ago,” said Goings, “our country would not be in the mess we are in today.”
‘A real lawyer’
The hiring of Bowers marks a stark contrast to some of the most bombastic legal advisers Trump seemed to surround himself with after his defeat in the 2020 elections.
Cable television events like former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell have publicized a wide range of bizarre conspiracy theories in the months since the election, but have had little success in advancing Trump’s case in any royal court. .
In Bowers, by contrast, Trump will get “a real lawyer who’s been in real cases, put forward real arguments, knows how to examine witnesses – all kinds of things you would like to see in a real lawyer,” said Harpootlian.
Tim Pearson, a close friend of Bowers and the top political strategist for SC Governor Henry McMaster, said that Trump “is obviously taking this seriously because he is no longer listening to the crazy brigade of aspiring justice that’s out there feeding him nonsense. and he now has a serious lawyer. “
Bowers declined interview requests for this story. Approached by a reporter outside his office on Thursday, shortly after news of his hiring, all Bowers said was that he hoped to represent the president.
That reluctance to pull this moment out of the national spotlight, say the allies, shows precisely the kind of professionalism that some of Trump’s previous legal advisers lacked.
“Butch focuses on defending his client more than on his own TV profile or his own financial results,” said Rob Godfrey, a veteran of SC GOP. “This should be a welcome change in an orbit that has been filled with a cast of characters that sometimes looks like the worst design you could possibly imagine.”
Military background
Bowers was born in Estill, a small town in Hampton County about two hours west of Charleston. Her father, Karl, was a magistrate who became chairman of the state highway commission in the mid-1970s and served as a federal highway administrator under President Jimmy Carter.
Months after the end of his term in Washington, DC, Karl Bowers was convicted of tax evasion in 1980, according to an Associated Press report. He lost his final appeal in 1983, when McMaster was the US attorney in South Carolina. Karl Bowers spent less than a year in federal prison.
Bowers was in high school when his father went to prison. He received a diploma in political science from the University of South Carolina in 1988, a master’s degree in public administration from the College of Charleston and a law degree from Tulane University.
Now married and the father of four children, Bowers is a colonel in the National Air Guard of SC. He enlisted at the age of 17 after his father took him to national guard weekend training as a child, Bowers wrote in an online column for the unit.
He was a medical services and transportation officer before joining the body of the Judge Advocate General (JAG) after graduating from law school and became a high ranking legal officer in the Guard.
This experience is part of what distinguishes Bowers, said SC Attorney General Alan Wilson, who worked closely with Bowers on the Guard’s legal team.
“Being a military leader teaches you how to make difficult decisions under immense stress and a lot of public scrutiny,” said Wilson. “A JAG officer doesn’t just have to be a good lawyer, he must be able to be launched into a war zone and carry his weight like any other soldier.”
High profile cases
One of Bowers’ first jobs as a lawyer in the 1990s was at McMaster’s family business. He now works as a campaign attorney for McMaster, a Trump ally who shared office space with Bowers in a building near the SC Statehouse.
He has already represented three other governors, two in South Carolina and one in North Carolina, as well as the SC Republican Party and the SC Election Commission, which he chaired in the mid-2000s. He was a special advisor on voting issues in the United States Department of Justice under President George W. Bush.
He helped then Gov. Mark Sanford escaped an impeachment effort in preparation in 2009, after Sanford secretly left the state to visit his mistress in Argentina, and a few years later, the then governor. Nikki Haley won an ethics hearing in the House after being accused of using her position for personal gain when she was in the legislature.
“Butch is a good friend and a good lawyer,” said Haley, who was a United Nations ambassador under Trump for two years and considered a likely candidate for the presidency in 2024. “President Trump is lucky to have him on his team” .
Sanford said Bowers “would be an asset to anyone for whom he is arguing”.
“He does not have a bombastic or loud style, but according to what you would expect from a southerner and military officer, he is lucid, of course, to the point, and very meticulous in his memory and searching for details,” Sanford said .
Former SC GOP president Karen Floyd said Bowers was so good at breaking complicated legal issues while working at the party that he hired him for some corporate jobs after leaving his leadership post.
She called the soft-spoken, six-foot-tall Bowers a “gentle giant”, but said her calm demeanor can fool some people.
“If you take a rock, it will take an atomic bomb,” said Floyd. “When you find him, you have no idea that there is a fire there. But there is a tremendous capacity to fight and defend, so much so that it is almost surprising when you see him in battle mode.”
As Trump’s vocal critic, Sanford expressed surprise when he learned that Bowers would take over the case, saying he didn’t expect it “from the caliber of person I knew Butch was”.
But Sanford also said he could understand the calculation. At least 17 Republican senators would need to vote to condemn Trump to lose the case, which currently seems unlikely, except for the emergence of new evidence.
“It is a smart and measured move by Butch, as the almost certain result is that Trump will win based on the vote count in the Senate,” said Sanford. “And in doing so, he will be able to put another feather on his cap, where he can say that he successfully defended the impeachment of a president.”