Five members of Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team quit less than two weeks before the trial.
A source tells CNN that Butch Bowers, Deborah Barbier, Josh Howard, Johnny Gasser, and Greg Harris have excused themselves from the defense team.
A person familiar with the departures told CNN that Trump wanted the attorneys to argue there was mass election fraud and that the election was stolen from him rather than focus on the legality of convicting a president after he’s left office. Trump was not receptive to the discussions about how they should proceed in that regard.
CNN
The next day, Trump announces that lawyers David Schoen and Bruce Castor will be leading his defense.
Schoen represented Roger Stone during his sentencing and appeal. He also met with Jeffrey Epstein multiple times over the weeks before Epstein died in prison, and he brags about representing Russian and Israeli mafia figures.
It’s unclear if the person Schoen refers to as “a guy the government claimed was the biggest mafioso in the world” is Semion Mogilevich, who has decades of ties to Trump and was once at the top of the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list until James Comey removed him.
Castor is a former politician who served two weeks as Pennsylvania’s attorney general. Earlier, as a district attorney, his most notable political move was choosing not to prosecute Bill Cosby for sexual assault in 2005.
External Sources
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/30/politics/butch-bowers-deborah-barbier-trump-impeachment-team/index.html
https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1356015238932557824
https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1356020000407113728?s=20
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-impeachment-lawyer-david-schoen-b1795571.html
https://www.foxnews.com/person/s/david-schoen
https://atlantajewishtimes.timesofisrael.com/attorney-on-the-cutting-edge-with-hot-topics/
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/02/17/cosby/
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