COLOMBIA, SC (AP) – Butch Bowers often defends public officials in cases of ethics. But he never faced anything like this.
It is up to Bowers, a South Carolina election and ethics lawyer, to stand up and defend Donald Trump as the Senate dives next week into an impeachment trial unlike any other, centered on accusations that the former president incited crowd that invaded the US Capitol on January 6. For Trump, the first impeachment president twice, the stakes are huge: if convicted, he could be prevented from taking public office again, ending any hope of mounting another bid for the White House in 2024.
Trump turned to Bowers, a familiar figure in Republican legal circles, after other legal allies approved the case. This is a notable departure from his first impeachment trial in 2020, when he had a group of prominent lawyers – including Alan Dershowitz, Jay Sekulow, who represented him in the Russian investigation, and Kenneth Starr – standing in his corner.
The first impeachment trial involved accusations that Trump wrongly requested Ukraine’s help for his reelection campaign. The Senate absolved him of these charges. The retrial may depend on broader legal issues, including “whether the constitution allows for post-impeachment action in the Senate,” said Sekulow, who does not participate in Trump’s legal defense.
Sekulow said he did not expect Bowers, who has years of experience representing elected officials and political candidates – including former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, against a failed impeachment effort that turned into an ethics investigation – to be undermined for never defending a current or former president at a Senate trial. Sekulow noticed that he had never done that either before.
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“If Trump wants him to be Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell 2.0, this is not going to end well for anyone.”
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“He is an excellent lawyer with a tremendous reputation, who understands the law and politics,” said Sekulow on Friday.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham recommended Bowers to Trump and told Fox News that he sees him as the “anchor tenant” on the Trump team. Trump adviser Jason Miller, who also directed the Sanford governor and congressional campaigns, said Bowers “will do an excellent job defending President Trump”.
Bowers did not respond to a message seeking comment.
His strategy for Trump’s defense is unclear, although questioning the validity of the trial is a clear option. Many Republicans in the Senate – the jurors he will need to persuade – said they had doubts about whether a former employee’s impeachment trial is constitutional, even though it has happened before.
The nine House managers who process the case, meanwhile, will almost certainly focus on linking Trump’s comments to supporters at a rally before the turmoil – including encouraging them to “fight like hell” – to the chaos that soon followed . House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will forward the impeachment article to the Senate on Monday, starting the first phase of the trial.
While perhaps nothing can compare to the legal and political turmoil of a Senate impeachment trial, Bowers has experience both in Washington and in leading elected leaders during the fight.
He served as a lawyer for Sanford and another former governor, Nikki Haley, guiding her in an investigation into whether she had violated state ethics law.
An ethics panel eventually released Haley. Rob Godfrey, a longtime adviser at Haley who worked closely with Bowers during his representation from the governor, said the lawyer “works hard, has an eye for detail and knows the law”.
Bowers worked for Sanford when state lawmakers considered impeaching him after revelations that Sanford had disappeared from the state, without leaving the chain of command for five days, for a romantic date in Argentina in 2009. The effort never left the committee.
The investigations that followed by the Associated Press on Sanford’s other trips showed that he traveled on commercial airlines in expensive seats, despite the state’s low-cost travel rules, and used state planes for personal and political travel.
Lawyer Butch Bowers speaks during a 2009 press conference at the Statehouse in Columbia, SC
AP
At the time, Bowers predicted that the governor would be acquitted, saying the charges were not criminal and “limited to minor technical issues”. Sanford paid the largest ethics fine in the state’s history – $ 74,000 – as well as nearly $ 37,000 to cover the costs of the investigation.
Joel Sawyer, a longtime Sanford spokesman, said Bowers’ strengths lie in his calm demeanor and determination to examine legal arguments without worrying about pomp and politics.
“If Donald Trump allows Butch to be Butch and not try to make him someone he is not, in terms of crazy legal arguments and looking for television cameras, that will be a big adjustment for Butch,” said Sawyer. “If Trump wants him to be Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell 2.0, this is not going to work well for anyone.”
Bowers represented Governor Henry McMaster – a close ally of Trump – in a fight for excessive contributions, a 2016 case that ended with the then vice governor agreeing to pay more than $ 70,000 in fines and reimbursements. Bowers and McMaster, a longtime figure in South Carolina’s Republican politics, also shared an office space.
Bowers was also a lawyer for former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory and the South Carolina Election Commission in litigation over voter identification laws, as well as a former South Carolina sheriff who pleaded guilty to embezzlement and misconduct. conduct in office. In 2018, he was a lawyer for the University of South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley in her defamation lawsuit against the Missouri athletics director.
Bowers served as a special adviser on voting issues at the United States Department of Justice under President George W. Bush, was Florida’s legal counsel for the John McCain presidential campaign in 2008 and chaired the 2004 South Carolina Election Commission from 2007. With degrees from the University of South Carolina and the College of Charleston, Bowers graduated from Tulane University School of Law in 1998.
State Senator Dick Harpootlian, former president of the Democratic Party of South Carolina and a longtime friend of President Joe Biden who faced Bowers several times in court, said he expected “low-key” Bowers – also a colonel in the Carolina Air Guard South – making decisions on the case based not on personality, which Harpootlian said was in contrast to Trump’s previous lawyers.
“Trump will not be able to make Butch someone he is not,” said Harpootlian.