During the impeachment trial in January 2020, the Tea Party Patriots called for action, urged supporters to call Congressional offices, organized conference calls to discuss messages and talking points, and sent materials to voters. The group also sent 47 tweets condemning or criticizing the process. So far, this goes around, he has shared only five impeachment-related tweets since Trump’s impeachment Chamber again on January 13, according to a review by POLITICO.
“It would be new to me if any serious conservative organizations were involved,” said a conservative strategist.
The hesitation of conservative organizations to join the turmoil of impeachment suggests that the political drama is not motivating Republican voters while they, and others, are confident in Trump’s absolution. The former president may be running toward a second historic impeachment trial with little infrastructure for his defense, but Senate Republicans will almost certainly not care what kind of defense they offer. Forty-five of them voted that a post-presidential impeachment is unconstitutional – almost guaranteeing that there will be 67 votes needed for sentencing.
As a measure of Trump’s internal confidence, an aide confirmed on Monday that there are no plans for the former president – who firmly believes he is his best defender – to testify in his own defense next week, despite reports that he was being considered. However, Trump adviser Jason Miller does not rule out the possibility that the former president will act as his own replacement with media appearances during the impeachment.
Still, there are some disputes within Trump’s ranks over what strategy they should follow while Trump defends himself against accusations that he helped incite the deadly Capitol riot that resulted in the deaths of five people. Although Trump wants to use his judgment to condemn electoral fraud and plead for electoral reforms, the few advisers still working on him say that his best recourse is simply to argue what the vast majority of Senate Republicans are saying: that impeachment itself is unconstitutional.
An aide involved in Trump’s defense, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said there were no plans in place for the communications team to discuss electoral fraud as part of his impeachment messages, despite reports that the former president was looking forward to doing so.
“I will focus on constitutionality,” said the aide, citing the 1974 House impeachment process against former President Richard Nixon, which was suspended after he resigned and was never brought to a full House vote.
“[Nixon] on the left and House Democrats dropped the case and moved on with the business of the American people, ”added the aide, anticipating a point of discussion before next week’s trial.
Establishing a messaging strategy is not the only obstacle that Trump and his aides face. Assembling a real legal team was also difficult. Over the weekend, five lawyers who were supposedly preparing to represent the former president left abruptly. The group devised a two-part defense strategy focused on whether the constitution allows impeachment of a former president and whether the definition of incitement applies to Trump’s comments made at the White House hours before his supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol in January 6.
But their approach made Trump angry at the lack of attention to his allegations of electoral fraud. On Sunday, the former president announced that two new lawyers, David Schoen and Bruce Castor Jr., would take up his defense. A source close to the Trump team said there was no expectation, as of now, that other lawyers would be formally added to the team, including Jenna Ellis and Rudy Giuliani, the two lawyers who led Trump’s unsuccessful search to overturn the results of the 2020 elections.
Miller, who has been in frequent contact with Schoen for the past two weeks, told Fox News on Monday night that the former president’s lawyers will meet the deadline for submitting a brief report on Tuesday in response to the approved impeachment article by the Chamber. He did not list electoral fraud among the topics when previewing the content of Trump’s defense.
“The compressed schedule made things interesting,” Miller said in a separate interview with POLITICO. “It is a good thing that this is quite straightforward.”
Miller remains one of the few advisers to Trump who is publicly working on impeachment issues. He was accompanied, in preparation for the trial, by a small group of former campaign advisers and White House officials who are helping with research, outreach to Congress, surrogate operations and quick response. They include Francis Brennan, Dean Cleary, Sonny Nelson, Ali Pardo and Ted Goodman from Trump’s 2020 campaign, and Ben Williamson, Ory Rinat and Sam Brown of the White House.
Although the Republican National Committee has worked with Trump’s impeachment team behind the scenes, they are not expected to take a public role during next week’s trial or plan to launch a centralized website targeting Democratic lawmakers to support impeachment procedures – something they did on autumn 2019 with its “Stop the Madness” campaign.