Donald Trump names 2 lawyers to impeachment defense team, one from Alabama
Former president Donald Trump announced a new impeachment legal defense team Sunday, one day after it was revealed that he had parted ways with an earlier set of attorneys with just over a week to go before his Senate trial. The two lawyers representing him will be David Schoen, a criminal defense lawyer with offices in Alabama and New York, and Bruce Castor, a former county prosecutor in Pennsylvania. Both issued statements through a Trump adviser saying that they were honored to take the job. “The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history. It is strong and resilient. A document written for the ages, and it will triumph over partisanship yet again, and always,” said Castor, who served as district attorney for Montgomery County, outside of Philadelphia, from 2000 to 2008. The announcement Sunday was intended to promote a sense of stability surrounding the Trump defense team as his impeachment trial nears. The former president has struggled to hire and retain attorneys willing to represent him against charges that he incited the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, which happened when a mob of loyalists stormed Congress as lawmakers met Jan. 6 to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory. That’s a contrast from his first impeachment trial, when Trump’s high-profile team of attorneys included Alan Dershowitz, one of the best-known criminal defense lawyers in the country, as well as White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and Jay Sekulow, who has argued cases before the Supreme Court. Trump’s team had initially announced that Butch Bowers, a South Carolina lawyer, would lead his legal team after an introduction from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. But that team unraveled over the weekend due to differences over legal strategy. One person familiar with their thinking said Bowers and another South Carolina lawyer, Deborah Barbier, left the team because Trump wanted them to use a defense that relied on allegations of election fraud, and the lawyers were not willing to do so. The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the situation and requested anonymity. Republicans and aides to Trump, the first president to be impeached twice in American history, have made clear that they intend to make a simple argument in the trial: Trump’s trial, scheduled for the week of Feb. 8, is unconstitutional because he is no longer in office. “The Democrats’ efforts to impeach a president who has already left office is totally unconstitutional and so bad for our country,” Trump adviser Jason Miller has said. Many legal scholars, however, say there is no bar to an impeachment trial despite Trump having left the White House. One argument is that state constitutions that predate the U.S. Constitution allowed impeachment after officials left office. The Constitution’s drafters also did not specifically bar the practice. Castor, a Republican who was the elected district attorney of Pennsylvania’s third-most populated county, decided against charging Cosby in a 2004 sexual encounter. He ran for the job again in 2015, and his judgment in the Cosby case was a key issue used against him by the Democrat who defeated him. Castor has said that he personally thought Cosby should have been arrested, but that the evidence wasn’t strong enough to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. In 2004, Castor ran for state attorney general unsuccessfully. In 2016, he became the top lieutenant to the state’s embattled attorney general — Kathleen Kane, a Democrat — as she faced charges of leaking protected investigative information to smear a rival and lying to a grand jury about it. She was convicted, leaving Castor as the state’s acting attorney general for a few days. Schoen met with financier Jeffrey Epstein about joining his defense team on sex trafficking charges just days before Epstein killed himself in a New York jail. In an interview with the Atlanta Jewish Times last year, Schoen said he had also been approached by Trump associate Roger Stone before Stone’s trial about being part of the team and that he was was later retained to handle his appeal. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence and then pardoned him. Schoen maintained in the interview that the case against Stone was “very unfair and politicized.” Neither Schoen nor Castor returned phone messages seeking comment Sunday evening. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Mike Bloomberg struggles to respond to politics of #MeToo era
Mike Bloomberg was caught flat-footed during much of Wednesday night’s debate.
Bill Cosby to advocate for education in rural Alabama
Embattled actor and comedian Bill Cosby will visit Alabama on Thursday and Friday for events aimed at highlighting schools in one of the poorest areas of the state. Cosby, whose record of educational philanthropy has been overshadowed in recent months by sexual assault allegations from more than 25 women and two pending lawsuits, will speak in several cities across Alabama’s rural Black Belt. The region is named for its fertile black soil but stifled by low income and high unemployment. Cosby will speak with high school students as part of the nonprofit Black Belt Community Foundation’s new campaign to improve education in the south-central part of the state. Foundation president Felecia Lucky said Cosby is volunteering his time to bring exposure to schools in the area. “We are really grateful for the opportunity to shed light on the plight of our children,” she said. “We’re hoping that people will realize now more than anything is that Black Belt children matter.” Lucky said Cosby will meet students at Selma High School on Friday before marching with them across the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge. The bridge was the setting for Bloody Sunday in 1965, where police beat peaceful demonstrators marching in favor of voting rights. Over the course of decades, Cosby and his wife, Camille, have donated millions of dollars in gifts to colleges and hundreds of thousands more for scholarship grants through the couple’s foundation. Lucky said the foundation chose Cosby based on his history of advocating for education. “We are so grateful for the gift of Dr. Cosby and the opportunity to showcase it on a national stage,” she said. “But at the end of the day the main focus is that Black Belt children matter.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
