Rudy Giuliani can defend Trump in an impeachment trial

With a Senate retrial approaching after President Donald Trump was ousted for the second time on Wednesday, House Democrats tell they are “ready to go” – but Trump’s legal strategy remains totally unknown, as he is supposedly struggling to find lawyers to represent him.

Trump’s original cast of impeachment lawyers, who represented him during his first impeachment trial – including White House lawyers Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow – abandoned him, according to Bloomberg, as well as several other conservative law figures.

One lawyer who did not, however, is Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, a failed electoral lawyer and a conspiracy theorist.

Giuliani told ABC that he is “involved” in the defense of the president in the impeachment trial and even suggested Trump’s possible participation in the trial.

“You always make that decision at the last minute,” Giuliani told Jonathan Karl of ABC this week about the possibility of Trump testifying. “As a lawyer, I would not be as strongly opposed to your testimony as I was [in Trump’s first impeachment trial]. “

Still, Giuliani’s exact role is uncertain: According to Karl, Trump’s legal strategy remains “very much in the air”, and Hogan Gidley, who served as press secretary for the Trump campaign in 2020, pushed back the idea that Giuliani will have a role.

“President Trump has not yet determined which lawyer or law firm will represent him in the infamous attack on our Constitution and democracy, known as an ‘impeachment hoax’,” Gidley tweeted on the weekend. “We will keep you informed.”

Prominent figures from the Republican Party have suggested that Giuliani – whose public profile has become increasingly bizarre in recent months and who currently faces the prospect of cassation in the state of New York – would not help in Trump’s Senate case.

The former New York mayor plans to reiterate a series of unmasked electoral fraud arguments if he ends up defending Trump before the Senate, despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence of widespread electoral fraud – and that Trump and Giuliani’s allegations have failed. repeatedly in section.

“I think it really comes down to what the defense is going to do,” Republican strategist Karl Rove told Fox News on Sunday. “And if it’s Rudy Giuliani’s defense, I think it increases the likelihood of more than 17 Republicans voting for the conviction.”

Any conviction will require at least 17 Republicans to join the 50 Democrats in the House to form a two-thirds majority of 67 votes, and questions about Giuliani’s potential impact aside, this does not seem very likely in the current state. Only a handful of Republican senators have expressed openness to condemn the president so far, and none have taken a definitive position on the matter (although Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Pat Toomey asked Trump to step down after the attack on the US Capitol earlier this month) .

When Trump was acquitted by the Senate in February last year for two articles of impeachment – abuse of power and obstruction of Congress – only one Republican senator, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, voted to convict him on any of the charges, though all Senate Democrats voted to condemn.

But Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader and future minority leader in the Senate, is reportedly “satisfied” with Trump’s impeachment this time, according to the New York Times, and sees it as a chance to “purge” [Trump] of the party. “McConnell’s stance on conviction – which is not yet clear – can generate a large block of Republican votes, depending on how he decides.

If at least 17 Republicans defect and vote with the slim Democratic majority of 50 House seats (which will begin on January 20, when Vice President-elect Kamala Harris becomes the tiebreaker), Trump will become history’s first president to be condemned by the Senate.

Ready or not, here comes the judgment

Whether he turns to Giuliani or looks elsewhere, Trump may have only a few days to resolve his legal representation. According to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the House’s top impeachment manager, the only impeachment article approved by the House on Wednesday will be sent to the Senate “soon”.

The House rejected Trump on a single charge of “inciting insurrection” by a bipartisan margin of 232 votes to 197, with 10 Republicans, including House Republican conference president Liz Cheney, joining the Democratic majority to vote in favor impeachment.

With time running out for Trump’s presidency, however, it is also extremely likely that the trial will take place when he leaves office. According to a memo distributed by McConnell, who remains the majority leader in the Senate until President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in, the quickest a trial can begin is at 1 pm Eastern time on January 20, one hour after Biden took office.

This left Senate Democrats – and Biden – concerned about the effect a trial might have on the early days of the Biden government, as well as the swift confirmation of appointments to the Biden Office. However, some members, such as New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, said the Senate must take both priorities at once.

“We can actually carry out impeachment trials, as well as do other things that are urgently critical, such as confirmation by important national security personnel,” Booker said Meet the press host Chuck Todd on Sunday.

In an additional wrinkle to the impeachment process, some members of the Republican Party in the Senate have also argued that the Senate is legally unable to try Trump after he leaves office.

“The founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove public office holders – not an inquiry against private citizens,” Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton said in a statement on Wednesday. “The Constitution presupposes a position from which a removed office holder can be removed.”

However, it is not clear whether this is indeed the case. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, the Congressional Research Service recently found that while the issue is still up for debate, there are precedents for trying a public official even after he has stepped down.

And there are consequences for impeachment in addition to being removed from office: as Ian Millhiser of Vox explained, the Senate could choose to permanently prevent Trump from holding public office, if he so wishes.

And according to Congressman Ted Lieu of California, one of the House’s impeachment managers, condemning Trump would also “deprive Trump of taxpayer-funded benefits such as pension, health insurance, office space and employees.”

In addition to specific sanctions, Democrats also signaled that Trump’s condemnation is important for the sake of accountability.

“I want people to focus on the solemnity and seriousness of these events,” Raskin said CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “Five Americans died because a violent crowd was encouraged, exhorted and incited by the president.”