- Up to five lawyers have left former President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team.
- The media reported that lawyers disagreed with Trump about his defense strategy.
- Jason Miller, a former Trump campaign advisor, tweeted that the legal team had not yet been finalized.
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Five lawyers abandoned former President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team just days before his Senate trial, CNN reported Saturday night.
The matches would have occurred after disagreements over the defense strategy.
Trump wanted his legal team to focus on false claims that the election had been stolen from him, rather than whether it was legal to convict a president who was no longer in office, both the CNN and the New York Times reported, citing known sources with the subject. The Times added that a person close to Trump contested this characterization.
Former Trump campaign advisor Jason Miller responded to news about the matches on Saturday, tweeting that the legal team had not yet been finalized.
“We did a lot of work, but we didn’t make a final decision about our legal team, which will be made soon,” he said.
CNN identified the departing lawyers as Butch Bowers, Deborah Barbier, Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris of South Carolina and Josh Howard of North Carolina. Bowers and Barbier split from the defense team in a “mutual decision”, according to the Associated Press, citing a person familiar with the situation.
The House of Representatives impeached Trump with a vote of 232-197 on January 13, on charges of inciting an insurrection in the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Since then, Trump has struggled to attract defense lawyers, in part because of his baseless allegations of widespread electoral fraud and his actions during the siege of the Capitol.
But Senate Democrats still face an uphill battle in their efforts to condemn Trump. Only five Republican senators joined them in the vote to proceed with the impeachment trial set for February 9.