Former President Trump’s lawyers are now arguing in the Senate floor against the constitutionality of the impeachment trial.
The lawyers who signed up to lead Trump’s impeachment advocacy team bring a curious story of experience. David Schoen, an experienced civil and criminal attorney, and Bruce L. Castor, Jr., a well-known attorney and former district attorney in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, are defending him at the trial.
The lawyers, both with legal careers peppered with curiosities, joined the Trump team the day after five members of their defense left, effectively taking the team down.
Trump’s lawyers are tasked with devising a defense strategy for a former president facing impeachment charges for inciting a deadly US Capitol insurrection, something that, if convicted, could also result in a ban on federal office. again.
For Schoen, whose website says he “focuses mainly on litigating complex civil and criminal cases before trial and appellate courts”, Trump is just the last controversial figure his career has brought him in recent years.
Schoen was part of the team of lawyers representing Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime friend and former adviser, in appealing his conviction related to issues that Stone brought to the jury. Stone withdrew the appeal after the then president commuted his prison sentence, but before Stone received a full presidential pardon for convictions, including lying to Congress to protect Trump.
Schoen, who has a master’s degree in law from Columbia University and a doctorate in law from Boston College, according to his biography, serves as chairman of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Subcommittee of the Civil Rights Litigation Committee.
Castor, meanwhile, served as Montgomery County District Attorney from 2000 to 2008, before serving two terms as a county commissioner, according to a statement from Trump’s office.
He was involved in at least one high-profile case as a district attorney when he refused in 2005 to prosecute Bill Cosby after Andrea Constand reported that the actor had improperly touched her at his Montgomery County home, citing “insufficient evidence. and admissible “.
Cosby was later tried and convicted in 2018 for drugging and sexually assaulting Constand at his home in 2004, despite the fact that Castor argued during a pre-trial hearing that he had already committed the state not to prosecute the actor.
Read more about the lawyers here.