HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Bruce L. Castor Jr. answered his cell phone, but did not have time to talk.
“I’m 12 minutes from prime time,” he said, before addressing the US Senate to defend his client, Donald Trump, as one of two defense lawyers in the former president’s second impeachment trial.
It may have marked the high point for him.
Castor’s moment in the national brilliance, televised from the Senate Chamber pit, was seen as a slow, sometimes aimless disquisition in pursuit of a point. And that was just the opinion of several Republican senators, including constant supporters of the president.
“I thought I knew where he was going, and I really didn’t know where he was going,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C., who is among Trump’s most fervent supporters.
Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, added that Castor “just rambled indefinitely”.
This was at odds with Castor’s reputation as a steadfast, outspoken prosecutor and media connoisseur in the Philadelphia suburbs, who for decades seemed as comfortable in front of a camera as in court.
To be sure, he wasn’t Trump’s first choice for a lawyer, and he may not be in the top ten of the limited options among those willing to accept the case. He had to prepare his arguments in a matter of days after the ex-president’s legal team left. And he had to learn the rules of an impeachment trial, a rarefied legal specialty.
Castor will have a chance to make a different impression when he starts presenting Trump’s defense, scheduled for Friday.
Still, he stumbled upon his first appearance on Tuesday, referring to himself as the “chief prosecutor” for Trump’s defense, before correcting himself, and called House managers – the real prosecutors in the case – of “Brilliant” and their presentation “well done”. He also recognized something that the former president did not recognize, namely that Trump lost the election.
Instead of arguing a legal theory, he tried a policy, which the Democrats only brought about impeachment because they wanted to rule out any chance that Trump would run for president again.
“We will understand why we are really here,” said Castor. “We are really here because the majority in the Chamber of Deputies does not want to face Donald Trump as a political rival in the future. That is the real reason we are here. “
He said he did this to strip the bark of any other pretext. “Nobody says it clearly, but unfortunately I have a way of saying it,” said Castor.
Castor, 59, is familiar with politics, being elected the ambitious prosecutor wearing cowboy boots and a pinstripe suit from one of the state’s wealthiest and most populous counties in the Philadelphia suburb.
There, he was used to securing murder convictions and standing in front of the lights and cameras on Philadelphia TV stations, which made him known in the most politically dominant region of the state.
But if he wanted to use that position as a stepping stone to a higher position, the plan did not work. In the middle of his eight years as a district attorney for Montgomery County, he faced the Republican Party’s hand-picked candidate for state attorney general, fighting the establishment in an expensive and nasty primary. He lost about 5 percentage points.
Castor went on to become a county commissioner, but was marginalized by his colleagues, a Republican and a Democrat, who formed a working majority that paralyzed him. Castor hung his steward’s certificate in the bathroom above the office bathroom.
In 2013, he became a strident critic of then Gov. Tom Corbett, the Republican who defeated Castor in the 2004 primary for Attorney General.
He toured the state exploring a major challenge to Corbett’s reelection candidacy, but Castor gave up, regretting that there are not enough people “willing to risk their necks and support me”. Corbett’s unpopularity eventually led to his historic defeat.
Castor then ran for his former job as a public prosecutor amid emerging allegations that comedian Bill Cosby had sexually assaulted dozens of women and that he – Castor – refused to prosecute. one of these cases a decade earlier.
His decision not to sue became the central line of attack for his Democratic opponent on the run. He defended himself by saying that there was not enough evidence to successfully sue, but he lost and later testified in defense of Cosby.
In doing so, he also questioned the credibility of the victim, Andrea Constand, who sued him for defamation. They solved the case in 2019.
Before Cosby was sentenced to a second trial, Castor returned to the scene as Pennsylvania’s first attorney general.
In it, he intervened to make legal decisions in the administration for the embattled and politically abandoned state attorney general – Kathleen Kane, a Democrat – while she fought charges of leaking protected investigative information to defame a rival and lie to a grand jury. about this .
She was soon convicted, leaving Castor as interim state attorney general – the position he had sought so much – but only for two weeks, until a nominee for the governor took over.
His resurgence as Trump’s impeachment lawyer was a time to scratch his head at the political and legal world of Pennsylvania. Rob Gleason, a former state party president who helped with Trump’s reelection campaign, called Castor to congratulate him, but had not spoken to him in five or six years.
“I didn’t know who it was, I didn’t even think about it, but yes, I was surprised it was him,” said Gleason.
Castor had burned bridges with much of the Republican establishment.
“The Republican Party is dead in Pennsylvania, never to rise again,” he declared for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2015.
He was practically out of sight, apparently happy to never run again.
He hadn’t campaigned for Trump and a longtime friend, Brian Miles, said the Inquirer that the two men had never discussed Trump before Castor recently mentioned that he was ready for work.
Beaver answered the mystery by telling the Washington Post that his cousin, a lawyer on the House Republican team, “served as a driver.”
A few weeks later, there he was, checking notes on a yellow notepad in the Senate pit and talking while the world watched.
Despite all the criticisms directed at him, Castor suggested that Trump did not criticize his performance.
“Far from it,” he said. And on the broader criticism, he said, “only one person’s opinion matters”.
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Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/timelywriter.