On Friday, the last members of Trump’s legal cast took center stage in his impeachment trial and, for the most part, delivered exactly what he always seems to want from his lawyers: unclear and learned legal arguments, but fighting public
Since Donald Trump began his run for president, he has been surrounded by an ever-changing cast of lawyers, with varied skills to control, channel and satisfy his voluble and obstinate client.
During the final weeks of the 2016 campaign, Michael Cohen provided silent payments to a former porn star. In the second year of Trump’s presidency, John Dowd, head of the team that defends the president in Russia’s investigation, resigned after concluding that Trump refused to listen to his advice.
In Trump’s third year in office, he found a new lawyer to make his offer, as Rudy Giuliani waged a campaign to undermine Joe Biden and then helped lead the fruitless effort to overturn the 2020 election results, with stops in Ukraine and Four Seasons Total Landscaping along the way.
On Friday, the last members of Trump’s legal cast took center stage in his impeachment trial and, for the most part, delivered exactly what he always seems to want from his lawyers: unclear and learned legal arguments, but fighting public, in this case including distorted facts, rewritten history and attacks on opponents.
Despite an often unorthodox and undisciplined approach by his legal teams, Trump has survived more legal challenges as president than any of his recent predecessors. Although federal investigators discovered the secret payments and significant evidence that he may have obstructed the investigation in Russia, he was never charged. He was acquitted by the Senate in his first impeachment trial related to the pressure campaign in Ukraine and appeared prepared on Friday to see a similar result in this impeachment.
Legal experts, white-collar defense lawyers and even some of Trump’s former lawyers recognize that his survival was largely a function of the fact that he is the President of the United States, a position that gave him great powers to escape from legal consequences.
“At the beginning of the government, I would have said that it would be remarkable for someone to face this challenge and survive,” said Chuck Rosenberg, a former senior Justice Department official.
After initially stumbling through his first round of arguments on Tuesday, the last team – whether the seventh or eighth to defend Trump since he became president, depending on his math – followed the manual that Trump had long wanted his lawyers to follow.
They channeled their complaints and aggressively made arguments that tried to make their own behavior not so bad when compared to the other side. Democrats found his performance irritatingly deceptive, but it potentially provided the vast majority of Republicans in the Senate who oppose Trump’s condemnation with talking points they can use to justify their votes.
“Hypocrisy,” said one of Trump’s lawyers, Michael van der Veen, after playing a multi-minute clip of prominent Democrats and media commentators using language like “fight” in an effort to show that Trump’s own words before the turmoil could have played no role in inciting violence.
“The reality is that Mr. Trump was in no way instructing these people to fight or use physical violence,” said van der Veen. “What he was instructing them to do was to challenge their opponents in the primary elections to push for radical electoral reforms, to hold Big Tech accountable.”
Serving as one of Trump’s lawyers is a real tightrope act for a number of reasons, from his indifference to law and regulations to his long-held belief that he is his best advocate and spokesman. In the 1970s, under the tutelage of Roy Cohn – whose aggression was accompanied by his lack of adherence to ethical standards – Trump began to mix legal and public relations problems.
These factors have often led Trump to ignore legal advice and dictate to lawyers what he wants them to do. Some lawyers have survived years with Trump through various investigations, such as Jay Sekulow and Florida’s Marty and Jane Raskin. They were involved in defending Trump in his first impeachment battle. And they have succeeded in defending Trump in the high-profile investigation he faced as president, the special council’s inquiry into a possible conspiracy between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian authorities.
But these lawyers are not part of your current team.
Nor did Pat Cipollone, the former White House lawyer who spent weeks at the end of Trump’s term rejecting several efforts to overturn election results. As he did with a former White House lawyer, Donald McGahn, Trump repeatedly wanted the White House councils to act as his personal lawyers.
And Trump’s willingness to listen to lawyers who tell him what he doesn’t want to hear has significantly decreased after the November 3 election. Instead, he relied on Giuliani, whom other Trump advisers blame for entangling Trump in his two impeachment battles, to guide him in his effort to overturn the election results.
Giuliani repeatedly told associates that he would be involved in defending impeachment, despite his potential witness status, as he addressed the crowd at the Trump rally on January 6. Trump finally told Giuliani he would not be involved.
But Trump’s advisers struggled to find a legal team to defend him.
Finally, with the help of an ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C., Trump’s advisers announced that he had hired Butch Bowers, a well-known lawyer with experience representing South Carolina politicians facing crises.
But just over a week before the trial began, Bowers and the four attorneys attached to him abruptly left, although another lawyer, David Schoen, who was expected to be part of the team from the beginning, remained on board.
In another reminder of his ad hoc approach, Trump asked associates on Thursday night if it was too late to add or remove lawyers from the team.
Just hours before Trump’s team appeared in the Senate, the group was still discussing the order of appearance of its two main lawyers, Schoen and Bruce L. Castor Jr. In the end, they decided that a third lawyer, van der Veen, would the opening act.
The uncertainty apparently stemmed from Castor’s widely criticized appearance on Tuesday when he made a bewildering and unfocused opening statement that infuriated his client. Trump told advisers and friends that he no longer wanted to hear about Castor, said people familiar with the Trump team’s discussions.
People familiar with the composition of the legal team said that Eric Herschmann, a lawyer and ally of the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who worked in the West Wing during the last year of the government, was a key figure in putting him together.
When Trump asked Herschmann who hired Castor after his disastrous departure on Tuesday, Herschmann, according to two people with knowledge of the exchange, sought to place the blame on Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. Herschmann did not respond to an email asking for comment.
At the end of Friday, van der Veen, a Philadelphia personal injury lawyer, emerged as Trump’s top advocate, dealing with senator issues, making a series of false and bizarre allegations, calling impeachment a version. “culture of constitutional cancellation” And declaring that Friday’s proceedings were his “most miserable” experience in Washington.
Congressman Jamie Raskin, D-Md., The House’s chief impeachment manager, replied: “I think we’re sorry, but man, you should have been here on January 6”.
Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman c.2021 The New York Times Company
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