One of former impeachment advocates for former President Donald Trump is a former Pennsylvania district attorney who refused to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault.
Bruce L. Castor Jr., who was hired by Trump over the weekend to represent him at his Senate trial, served as the top prosecutor in Montgomery County from 2000 to 2008. In 2005, Andrea Constand reported that Cosby had drugged and sexually abused her the year before. But Castor refused to proceed with criminal charges against Cosby.
In 2014, after more than a dozen Cosby accusers spoke out, Castor defended his decision not to pursue a criminal case, suggesting that there were inconsistencies in Constand’s account. (He said that he thought Constand was “probably the victim of a sexual assault”, but that “” probably “doesn’t win criminal trials.”)
The following year, when Castor was running to return as a district attorney for Montgomery, Constand sued Castor for defamation, making Castor’s handling of the Cosby case a key issue in the election.
Castor lost to Kevin Steele, a Democrat.
Castor, for his part, sued Constand, claiming that her lawsuit sabotaged his chances of election; the lawsuit was dismissed in 2018, days before Constand testified at Cosby’s criminal trial.
Constand and Castor resolved their defamation complaint in 2019.
Steele pursued and won the sentence of Cosby, who was sentenced to serve three to ten years in prison in 2018.
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Castor and David Schoen were hired by Trump after the former president’s previous legal team, led by Karl “Butch” Bowers, abruptly parted ways with him for insisting that the 2020 election was “stolen”.
According to the report, Trump wanted them to argue during the impeachment trial that he really won the election.
Schoen, a defense lawyer from Long Island, NY, whose previous clients include Roger Stone, had met with Jeffrey Epstein, allegedly to discuss Epstein’s defense against sexual abuse allegations by dozens of girls. Days later, Epstein was found dead in his cell. His death was considered suicide.
Schoen promoted a conspiracy theory that Epstein may have been murdered.
In 2007, Epstein quietly cut a “non-lawsuit agreement” with Alexander Acosta, then a US attorney in Florida, avoiding federal charges in a related case involving underage sex trafficking of underage girls.
Acosta, who became Trump’s Labor Secretary, resigned in 2019 amid the consequences of his love affair with Epstein after he was revealed by the Miami Herald.
Trump’s impeachment trial is set to begin on February 9.
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