Trump Impeachment Team In Limbo
With the start of the Second Impeachment of former President Trump only days away, the Trump defense team is still not settled:
With a little more than a week before his impeachment trial is set to begin, President Trump’s legal team is in tumult.
Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, who were expected to be two of the lead attorneys, are no longer on the team. A source familiar with the changes said it was a mutual decision for both to leave the legal team.
“The Democrats’ efforts to impeach a president who has already left office is totally unconstitutional and so bad for our country. In fact, 45 Senators have already voted that it is unconstitutional. We have done much work, but have not made a final decision on our legal team, which will be made shortly,” former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller told CNN.
Bowers, a respected lawyer from Columbia, South Carolina, once worked in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush.
Content by DecluttrBarbier, a South Carolina litigator, worked closely on several high-profile cases and was a former federal prosecutor for 15 years in the state before opening up her own boutique criminal defense firm.
Interesting to note, as late as Saturday morning Barbier and Bowers were being hailed by Trump allies as an “A-Team” while noting that the South Carolina-heavy contingent were all known to Senator Lindsey Graham:
Additional lawyers could be named to the defense team in coming days. The selection so far marks a dramatic shift from Trump’s previous impeachment. During that Senate trial last year, Trump was defended by lawyers experienced on the national stage. They included Kenneth Starr, the former special prosecutor whose work led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment; Jay Sekulow, who had defended Trump previously; and Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard University law professor, known for his work in high-profile controversial cases.
“They really have the A-team from South Carolina,” said Matt Moore, former chairman of the state Republican Party. Most of the lawyers have small offices in downtown Columbia.
Their qualifications are well known to South Carolina’s senior senator, Lindsey O. Graham, a close ally of Trump who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. Graham has been a leading voice in making the claim that the Constitution does not permit the prosecution of a former president.
What I heard is that the team was planning a process defense (Trump is no longer President and this is moot…) but he is insisting on merits defense including stolen election lies.Report
We know that when the lawyers representing the campaign during the lawsuits in November got to court, they dropped all mention of election fraud because of penalties for lying/making claims without evidence. The Senate, of course, is not a court of law. And the presiding officer isn’t a judge. I wonder how Sen. Leahy would respond to wack-a-doodle claims?Report
Global capitalism has rendered the practice of law no longer quite the profession it once was. However, and maybe I’m being naive, I believe there are still certain lines that if crossed are very difficult to recover from professionally no matter who you are or who your client is. We saw that in the election complaints. It’s possible this is another one.Report
Wack-a-doogle is the right word. We’re pretty deep into “Trump really believes this” territory. That might also be “dementia” territory.
I have no idea if showcasing that would be good or bad for the country and/or the GOP. I suspect that the Senate isn’t especially good at preventing a circus.Report
“That might also be “dementia” territory.”
Do the 146 elected CCers and scores of millions of Trump supporters also have dementia?Report
No, they are virtue signaling.
It’s like how almost everyone who claims to believe God will catch them if they fall will still refuse to jump off a building. The reality is they don’t actually believe that, they’re just trying to look good and be at the head of the in-crowd.
Most (all?) of the elected ones aren’t stupid or crazy but they think (maybe correctly) that making this claim will help them with their group.Report
I should have added…
For a minority of the supporters, they actually believe. Trump said it, ergo it must be true, ergo all the other information out there is fake news or the media looking the other way or something.
This is why politicians are supposed to play these games. The reason they do anyway is it’s extremely useful to fire up your base beyond reason.
To be fair, everyone is irrational and/or hyper emotional about something. It’s part of the human condition.Report
:grumble:
This is why politicians are NOT supposed to play these games.Report
It’s rare to see but the guy may be unrepresentable.Report
Better call
SaulTed Cruz. He’d do it in a heartbeat.ReportHeh, I’m trying to decide who would be worse served by that, lawyer or client.Report
So, wait, five of them have left now? Knowing Trump, I’m guessing their checks bounced.Report
Knowing Trump, no checks were even cut. Or ever would.Report
“Why would I pay these guys to represent me when they’re gonna become famous? Hell, they should pay *me*. But I won’t ask them to.”Report
That’s the joke in my house right now.
“Trump’s impeachment lawyers quit!”
“Probably heard from Rudy that they aren’t getting paid.”Report
It has been a long-standing “joke” in NYC about lawyering for Trump: He doesn’t listen and won’t pay.Report
As Rudy now knows all too well.Report
Given that much of the GOP in the Senate has decided this impeachment is unconstitutional and thus they will not vote to convict (as opposed to weighing the evidence and voting not to convict), would it be fair to assume they support jury nullification? I mean, that is essentially what they are doing, no?Report
Technically the vote was on whether to debate if the impeachment is constitutional. It’s possible to be both in favor of debating it and open to voting to convict. Not that I think conviction is likely.Report
What is the purpose of this? Faict we can’t imprison him with this nor can we remove him from office. Are we virtue signaling? Sending a message to future Presidents that they’ll be removed from office after they’ve not in office?
It’s possible to think both that this is a waste of time since he’s not in office and that he’s guilty… so in theory you could vote “no” on the “is it unconstitutional” and “yes” on “guilty”.
On the other hand, if you view this as playing GOP-gotcha (or if your base does), then you could cast a protest vote.Report
My understanding is that a conviction means Trump can not try to run for a second term.Report
Theoretically, it isn’t automatic; the Senate would still have to impose that penalty after conviction. But given that in cases of impeachment the only possible sanction for someone no longer in office is ineligibility for further office, it would be very weird if the Senate convicted and did not impose the penalty. On the other hand, there is nothing weird about the Senate doing something weird.Report
Current Congress can’t tie the hands of future Congresses.
In theory, because The Trump Empire is a massive F.You to the emolument clause in the Constitution and makes it impossible to police whether he’s corrupt, he’s always been ineligible to run for President. The American people overruled that.
I see no reason to think that this legally couldn’t happen again. Politically he’s already burned lots of bridges so I don’t think he can win the Prez again no matter what happens here.
Which brings me back to thinking this is a waste of time.Report
There doesn’t really seem to be a process to undo a conviction by the Senate in the constitution.
That said, if the Senate is functioning as a court, I guess an argument could be made it can hear appeals and reserve its position. It has no process set up to do that, but it could set one up.
That said, if Republicans ran on getting conviction reversed in 2022, that would come out even worse that election than this one did.
And he’s simply too old to run in 2028.Report
He’s convicted, he runs anyway in 4 years, he wins because he’s super popular.
Does Congress overrule the will of the people and say previous Congresses must be upheld? Didn’t we see this with how they treated emoluments and unseated him 4 years ago?Report
If he’s convicted, a lot of states are going to leave him off the ballots.
People who are ineligible to run for a specific office are barred from the ballot in literally every state.
And you may think ‘Red states won’t remove him’, and _maybe_ some won’t, but the problem is that all blue states will leave him off the _primary_ ballot. (So will a lot of red states, honestly.)
And it’s the Republicans in completely blue states like California that are completely bonkers, mostly because their party does not have to function at any level, as opposed to states where Republicans have to govern. Blue state Republicans are the ones that have gone the most Trumpy. Red states (Especially ones that have long been red states.), are, paradoxically, a moderating influence on Republican primaries.
Electoral college votes not being counted by Congress is the _last_ failsafe in the ‘barred from office’ thing, not the first. Trump won’t win the election because he simply won’t be allowed to compete in most places.Report
Thank you, that was what I was looking for. “It’s illegal” isn’t going to mean anything to Trump so there needs to be a way to mechanically enforce this.Report
I’m going to make a prediction of what will happen if Trump is convicted and barred. This is not any sort of prediction if that will happen, just…if it does, here is what happens after:
There will be a lot of lawsuits at the state level over ballot access.
Trump’s team will try to make the argument that the Supreme Court said ‘States cannot add eligibility requirement to Federal offices that eligibility defined in the constitution’, and the courts will politely point out ‘They have not done this, this exact ineligibility is in the constitution and no one thinks it’s unconstitutional to leave literally ineligible people off the ballot. And whether or not Congress is allowed to impeach and bar someone after they leave office is a political question we won’t touch’.
It probably won’t make it to the Supreme Court, but if it does, they will say the same thing.
Some of those Trump’s team will win, some they will lose…actually, who am I kidding? Some of them they will lose, some of them they _could_ win hypothetically but Trump is exceptionally incompetent at picking lawyers, so it seems unlikely he’d win _any_ case, unless the other side throws the case.
Which some states will. Some red states will interpret the clear law of the state to leave him off, but get challenged by Trump and the AG will basically not fight it. Other red states will just put him there to start with.
This is going to be court case after court case for Trump to fight to be a candidate in any way…and that’s just to position himself to be able to campaign and get votes at all. And…Trump is not good at ‘winning in court’.
So it probably won’t be enough.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign will run into increasing problems because…campaign fundraising. The second he’s barred from office, the US government is going to take the position he isn’t allowed to fundraise for his run for President, because he’s not _running_ for President anymore, according to them. This is going to be…somewhat disastrous for him.
I don’t actually know what happens if someone fundraises for an office they aren’t running for…right now, candidates just say they’re operating an ‘exploratory’ committee, without actually filing paperwork to run. But Trump can’t ‘explore’ running for an office he can’t hold.
All this, of course, assume Republicans actually decided to break from Trump, bar him from office, and walk away with their losses, with the hope of eventually being able to come back…or if they double down their bets on Trump _again_, for 2024.
Siri, what is the ‘sunk cost fallacy’?Report
It only takes 50%+1 to bar someone who has been impeached and convicted from office. The odds of 2/3rd voting for conviction, but less than 1/2 voting for barring, seems low.
People don’t really notice, but this is actually a three-step process, almost identical to courts. 1) The House/grand jury, 2) Senate two-third vote to convict/actual trial, 3) a Senate majority vote for punishment/sentencing.
It’s just we tend to leave off #3 because the constitution _automatically_ sentences anyone who is convicted to be removed from office.
And the constitution also say a person can’t be sentenced to more than removal from office and barring from office, so functionally the only thing we can do under #3 is the barring.
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This is because impeachment is actually an English common-law thing that is basically ‘trial by legislature’, and it operates almost exactly like a trial. The constitution just restricted it to very very specific punishments. In English impeachment, people could, and often were, sentenced to jail.
Which is what makes this entire ‘Can we impeach a previous office-holder?’ so stupid. It requires people to pretend impeachment was invented in the constitution instead of the constitution limiting an already-existing concept the founding fathers had of what impeachment was.Report
This seemed to be the road Rob Portman was suggesting he’d go down, right after he announced he wasn’t running for reelection.Report
“What is the purpose of this? ”
I’ve heard people say that establishing a precedent that the President cannot incite an insurrection to overthrow a certified election in order to retain his position as President is important.Report
BTW, in case anyone is wondering why his lawyers are quitting…it’s not just because they don’t want to put forward those claims in front of the Senate. It is because those claims actually would cause legal problems for them. Bear with me for a second.
So, Trump is trying to argue that the Capitol invasion was justified on the grounds he was sprouting about a stole election. Which incidentally happens basically require admitting that the riot happened because of what he said.
I.e., Trump is moronically trying to dodge impeachment for inciting a riot…by implicitly admitting to inciting a riot but arguing it had a good reason to exist.
Trump is, in case anyone has forgotten, now subject to US law and can be arrested for inciting a riot. Inciting a riot is a crime. Inciting a riot that people _died in_ is, in fact, murder. Meanwhile, what the Senate is trying to do to him has no jail time.
This is an astonishingly stupid legal strategy, and it’s not made any better by the ‘the riot I incited was justified’ not really being a very good legal defense to start with. It _might_ help in the politicized impeachment process, but it just as easily could screw up the Republican’s attempted defense of him (He didn’t do it, it was antifa, etc.) and make it _easier_ to convict him.
So everyone is thinking his lawyers are quitting because their client is doing something manifestly stupid that is likely to expose them to very obvious criminal liability for felony behavior…in an attempt to merely be able to run for President again. An attempt that is so dumb it might work in the opposite direction for that.
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That would indeed be a good reason for a lawyer to quit, but that’s not the full reason they are.
So the DOJ has started investigating other speakers (And Trump, even if they haven’t said it.) and what they said at that rally, to see if they are willing to charge incitement. They have also pointedly _not_ looked into what legislators did that day while Congress was in session, because legislators have complete legal immunity from things they say on the floor. Josh Hawley could incite a riot from the Senate floor and nothing could be done.
And lawyers are generally understood to have immunity in court from claims made while representing a client….you can’t sue a lawyer from suggesting, in court, that _you_ are the killer instead of his client.
Except…note the phrase ‘in court’. Does the Senate floor count _as court_?
Now, I want someone to imagine this conviction process starting, and we get the same sort of violent crowd outside showing up. This time they don’t get in, but there is a riot and people get hurt.
And during this, a lawyer is being told, by his client, to say things he thinks could help incite a riot, which is bad enough and honestly lawyers are mostly ethical enough to want to have nothing to do with that, but this lawyer is also unsure if he even has any sort of immunity when he’s talking.
Especially if Senators are standing there, with _their_ legal immunity, and inciting the riot too.
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Now, will this happen? Probably not. But it’s something lawyers have to think about…’Do I want to possibly be having to make legal arguments that will incite a riot, while also possibly stripped of the legal protections I normally have making an argument in court?’
Some of that is ‘I don’t want to be part of spreading this lie’, yes, but there has to be some level of actual worry about legal culpability, depending on what happens.Report