Trump to officially answer the impeachment charge against him on Tuesday
With mere hours left before a deadline for Donald Trump to officially answer the impeachment charge against him, the former president was still scrambling to assemble a legal defense, announcing that he had hired two new lawyers after a five-person team abruptly quit their roles.
Trump has time until noon on Tuesday to reply to a charge of incitement of insurrection, for encouraging the assault on the US Capitol on 6 January in which five people died. His trial in the Senate is scheduled to begin on 9 February.
With most Republicans signaling support for the former president, the trial is seen as having little chance of ending in conviction, which would open the way for the Senate to bar Trump, 74, from ever holding office again.
But the trial is still seen as a potentially explosive disruption in Washington, where the Biden administration is laboring mightily to get its agenda off the ground and some Republican leaders have been attempting to creep away from Trump.
The unveiling of Trump’s new legal pairing – one a Fox News commentator and former counsel to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the other a former county prosecutor who opposed charging Bill Cosby with sexual assault fueled concerns the provisional return to normalcy since Joe Biden’s inauguration is about to be upended.
The trial could be particularly dangerous, legal scholars said, if Trump builds his case around his lie that the November election was stolen and Senate Republicans effectively endorse that lie, in unprecedented numbers, by voting to acquit.
Multiple reports suggested Trump jettisoned his previous legal team because they were unwilling to recite the election fraud lie. Trump’s new lawyers, David Schoen and Bruce Castor, did not indicate what defense they had planned.
“Both Schoen and Castor agree that this impeachment is unconstitutional,” a statement said, adding that Schoen considered it “an honor” to represent Trump.
Castor said: “The strength of our constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history.”
Schoen is an eager media presence whose past clients include Roger Stone, convicted for lying to Congress in the Russia investigation but pardoned by Trump. The attorney also told the Discovery channel Epstein had asked him to take over the defense of his case before the convicted sex trafficker killed himself in prison in August 2019.
“I don’t believe he took his own life,” Schoen said, demonstrating an ease with the conspiratorial thinking that has fed Trump’s election lies and taken over the Republican base.
In a separate interview with the Atlanta Jewish Times, Schoen said: “I still think [Epstein] was murdered.”
