WASHINGTON (AP) – Donald Trump has spent much of his career employing powerful lawyers to carry out his orders. Now he is having trouble finding top-level help when he needs it most.
Since losing the November election to President Joe Biden, Trump has been hemorrhaging lawyers. Established firms have backed down from their unfounded allegations of electoral fraud. Those he retained made elementary mistakes in cases that were quickly dismissed as without merit. His personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was ridiculed for his performance before a federal judge during an election-related case.
With his legal options for contesting the election exhausted, Trump still needed a team to represent him in his historic second impeachment trial on the charge that he incited the deadly riot on January 6 at the United States Capitol. A team of lawyers from South Carolina was hired and then gave up, so Trump stayed with a lawyer from Pennsylvania and another from Alabama, giving them just a few days to prepare.
High-profile clients are often strong draws for ambitious lawyers, but Trump’s difficult relationships with his lawyers show the limits of accepting cases with dubious merits. His allegations of fraud were dismissed by the courts, his attorney general and other prominent Republicans.
Trump’s impeachment lawyers began their defense by misspelling the words “United States” in their report. And his initial presentation during the trial was criticized even by some of Trump’s most fervent supporters.
Trump smoked from his perch in Mar-a-Lago, and some in his circle said he should fire his lawyers. But he may not have much more options. And his legal danger is growing, most recently with a new criminal investigation into his electoral conduct in Georgia.
Trump has always used litigation as a weapon. He and his namesake company have been involved in a number of lawsuits, from multi-million dollar real estate disputes to personal defamation suits and fights with casino clients. He also regularly threatens legal action.
But in addition to some loyal lawyers like Giuliani and a small, powerful team that represents him for New York-related polls, it is unclear which heavyweights were left to represent him.
His impeachment team, David Schoen, a frequent television legal commentator, and Bruce Castor, a former Pennsylvania district attorney, had just over a week to prepare after Trump and his previous defense team broke up because they refused to offer Trump’s allegation of electoral fraud as a defense.
Castor, who faced criticism for his decision as a public prosecutor not to accuse actor Bill Cosby in a sex crime case, began with a rambling presentation. Unlike the Democrats, who relied on a carefully structured and planned presentation to argue the constitutionality of the case, Castor had only a yellow notepad with handwritten notes in front of him and appeared to be speaking offhand.
While Trump watched on TV, he complained in particular that his defense seemed weak compared to that of the Democrats, which showed an emotional video of the chaos on January 6 that left the Capitol staggering. Former Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro, who remains in close contact with the former president, has called on him to fire his legal team and embrace a new approach centered on Trump’s baseless allegations of mass electoral fraud.
Navarro told the Associated Press that he “warned the president that his legal team would disappoint him.”
Trump’s first impeachment team was led by famous defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, as well as then White House lawyer Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow, who argued cases before the Supreme Court.
Dershowitz was baffled by Castor’s performance, saying on Newsmax: “I have no idea what he’s doing”. Several Republican senators were equally shocked. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said the Trump team did a “terrible job”.
When asked about the criticism on Wednesday, Castor told reporters, “Only one person’s opinion matters.” Castor was asked if Trump expressed any disapproval and replied, “Far from it.”
Trump did not like the outcome of his electoral struggles in court, regardless of who the lawyers were. Some of them made bizarre claims that the courts quickly dispatched.
Lawyer Sidney Powell, who Trump said was part of his “wonderful lawyers and representatives” team, falsely suggested that a vote-counting equipment supplier was created in Venezuela to defraud elections for Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013. The campaign Trump’s later distanced himself from Powell, saying she was practicing law on her own. The supplier, Dominion Voting Systems, sued Powell for defamation last month and is looking for $ 1.3 billion.
The day after the riot, a lawyer representing the Trump campaign in a Philadelphia electoral case asked to withdraw from the matter, presenting an impressive motion in federal court that said Trump “used the attorney’s services to perpetrate a crime” and “insists on taking action that the lawyer finds disgusting.”
Dozens of judges rejected Trump’s electoral claims, sometimes with strong criticisms. But the power of these false claims has endured with the stubborn Trump supporters who invaded the Capitol on January 6.
While Trump’s comments at a rally before the riot drew attention to his calls for “fighting,” his lawyers for nearly two months made false and baseless allegations of electoral fraud in several states, widely promoted by conservative media and social media .
But after the impeachment, Trump’s legal needs are likely to increase, with investigations in New York, Georgia and possibly Washington, DC, where prosecutors will have subpoena power.
“You don’t want to have the last person in America standing who is a member of the order and willing to accept your case as your representative,” said Jessica Levinson, director of the Public Service Institute at Loyola Law School.
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Richer reported from Boston and Merchant reported from Houston. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Eric Tucker in Washington, Kate Brumback in Atlanta and Meg Kinnard in Columbia, SC contributed to this report.