On Wednesday afternoon, when former President Donald J. Trump’s legal team met in a conference room in a special suite at the Trump hotel in Washington, a longtime Trump adviser, Justin Clark, had a announcement to make.
Clark told one of the lawyers, Bruce L. Castor Jr., that after his widely criticized performance the day before, Trump no longer wanted him to appear on television during the impeachment trial.
Mr. Castor got up from his chair and started shouting furiously at Mr. Clark, arguing that Mr. Trump was wrong to demote him. The comings and goings were so heated that Mr. Castor left the conference room snorting.
He later apologized to Mr. Clark. But the tense exchange was just one example of how Trump’s legal team hurriedly assembled – a mix of political hands, a personal injury attorney, a former prosecutor and a longtime defense attorney, most of whom he disliked. nor did they particularly trust each other – they clashed, stumbled and regrouped throughout the impeachment process under the watchful and sometimes angry eye of their client.
The result was a plane taped while trying to land.
This article is based on interviews with half a dozen members of the legal team and others involved in the process, which eventually led to Trump’s acquittal.
“You have to remember that we literally had a week and a day to prepare the defense and we were all people who had never met before,” said one of the lawyers, David I. Schoen, in a statement after being approached for this article.
In the days following Trump’s impeachment process for his role in inciting the January 6 riot, Trump and his aides tried to assemble a legal team. Several lawyers who represented him in his previous impeachment made it clear that they would not be involved this time. Other white-collar defense lawyers were afraid to work for him because of political reaction and fears that Trump would refuse to pay his legal bills.
Two weeks before the Senate trial began, Trump announced that he had hired a team led by Butch Bowers, a South Carolina lawyer who defended many of the state’s prominent politicians. Soon after, Schoen, who lives in Atlanta, was promoted to be, as Schoen said, “co-quarterbacks” with Bowers.
But Bowers and four other lawyers who worked for Trump abruptly separated from him about 10 days before the trial. Mr. Bowers and Mr. Trump had no chemistry, and some people familiar with the events said that Mr. Trump wanted the team to press their false claims of a stolen election, something Bowers did not want to do. Mr. Schoen contested that account, saying that Mr. Trump never pressed him on the matter.
However, the team suddenly needed more lawyers. Stephen R. Castor, the top Republican Congressional lawyer who faced the Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment, recommended his cousin, Bruce L. Castor Jr., a former Pennsylvania prosecutor.
Mr. Schoen believed that he would still be in charge of the legal team. But, according to Schoen’s account, when Castor and several other lawyers he worked with in Philadelphia – including a personal injury lawyer named Michael T. van der Veen – showed up, they took up the defense.
“Once again, the president made it clear that I should take the lead and do most of the presentation,” said Schoen. “However, when Bruce came in, he brought in his partner Mike and several other lawyers to help them. He immediately started setting an agenda and assigning roles. My role has been marginalized. “
Schoen said he mistakenly refused to postpone Castor’s plan.
“My personality is such that I just didn’t feel comfortable saying anything and just accepted the agenda and realized that I would do the best job I could in any task that was assigned to me,” said Schoen. “That was my mistake and my disability.”
Schoen, who said he was in regular contact with Trump, added that he made another mistake: he did not tell Trump that Castor would have such a prominent role in public discussions.
Mr. Schoen was still scheduled to make the opening argument on the first day of the trial. House managers began the procedure with a convincing presentation that included a chilling compilation of video clips from the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill.
Mr. Castor then told Mr. Schoen that he wanted to address the jurors.
“I admired your courage in jumping straight,” said Schoen. “Unfortunately, he was criticized by the media and several people thought that perhaps the agenda should be reconsidered.”
Van der Veen said in an interview that Castor had spoken out because he believed it would be a way to reduce emotion in the room.
But Trump was furious at Castor’s sinuous, low-consumption performance. The former president called Mr. Clark, among others, to vent that afternoon.
“Bruce doesn’t go on TV again,” said Trump, referring to the televised presentations from the Senate floor. Mr. Trump also wanted Mr. Clark to join the legal team and present arguments in the chamber. Other advisers told the ex-president that shaking the defense in the middle of the trial was a bad idea.
But Mr. Clark told Mr. van der Veen that he needed to inform Mr. Castor that he would not be presenting anymore.
But on Wednesday afternoon, when Mr. Clark arrived at the Trump International Hotel and joined the group in the conference room of a private suite on the first floor called the “semi-detached house”, it was clear that Mr. van der Veen he had not relayed the message.
So Mr. Clark did that, and Mr. Castor exploded.
Mr. Castor did not respond to an email asking for comments. But both van der Veen and Schoen said they believed Castor was unjustly placed in the pillory.
What happened next is a matter of debate.
Two people involved in the effort said that Mr. Clark, as well as Alex Cannon, another lawyer who had worked on the Trump campaign and for the Trump Organization, took over the writing of the scripts that lawyers would use to present and told them not to deviate from them. Jason Miller, a political advisor to Trump, examined the full scripts, these people said. And Ory Rinat, a former White House adviser, helped develop the visual presentations.
Both Mr. Schoen and Mr. van der Veen denied that Trump’s advisors had scripted the presentations.
“I’m not taking credit for anyone’s work and they shouldn’t take mine either,” said van der Veen.
On Thursday night, there was another drawback: Mr. Schoen had a dispute with Mr. Miller over which video clips would be played and when. He resigned briefly, but said he would not be coming the next day and would sit at the Senate table with the other lawyers. Trump’s advisers struggled to figure out how to make Castor, whom the client didn’t want to see, take over a bigger part of the presentation on Friday.
Mr. Trump reached Mr. Schoen directly, and after they spoke, Mr. Schoen said he would make his presentation after all. Although the former president developed a relationship with Schoen, he also praised van der Veen’s performance on Friday to other team members.
Schoen, whose mother had died a few weeks before coronavirus and who blew a kiss to heaven after his final presentation, said Trump was far from a micromanager.
“He literally called me a few times a day, a few days, just to tell me how much he appreciated and trusted me and that I should have more confidence in myself,” said Mr. Schoen, who did not participate in the proceedings. the Senate on Saturday because of the Jewish Sabbath.
But Schoen added that he should have kept Trump more informed about who would speak at the trial.
“I think I disappointed him,” he said.