Former President Donald Trump has finally found lawyers to represent him during his Senate impeachment trial: an ex-prosecutor who declined to charge Bill Cosby and an Alabama attorney with ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Bruce Castor and David Schoen will be replacing no fewer than five other lawyers who split with Trump over strategy days before his trial for inciting the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Trump reportedly wanted the previous lawyers to parrot his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him—the very accusation that led his supporters to carry out the deadly insurrection.
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It’s not clear if the new lawyers plan to use that strategy.
“It is an honor to represent the 45th President, Donald J. Trump, and the United States Constitution,” Schoen said in a statement released by Trump.
Castor added, “The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history.”
From 2002 to 2008, Castor served as the Republican district attorney of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where he made the decision not to prosecute Cosby when Andrea Constand first accused the comedian of sexual assault, citing a lack of evidence.
Constand settled a lawsuit against Cosby, and Castor’s successor brought charges against him. Cosby’s team tried to get the case thrown out by arguing that Castor had made a deal that if the comedian testified in the civil case, the depositions wouldn’t be used against him in criminal court.
Cosby eventually stood trial twice, was convicted, and is in prison. Constand sued Castor for defamation in a case that was settled out of court, and the ex-DA filed a personal injury claim against the sex assault victim, arguing that Constand caused him to lose a 2015 bid for DA. That case was dismissed.
Schoen is a veteran trial attorney who has represented federal criminal defendants, including Trump crony Roger Stone, and plaintiffs in police misconduct and civil rights cases.
He was most recently in the headlines for meeting with pedophile sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein before his death in prison; Schoen said Epstein wanted him to lead his defense team.
Trump’s trial is scheduled to start the week of Feb. 8. If two-thirds of senators vote to convict him, the Senate could then vote by a simple majority to bar him from running from office again.
However, on Jan. 26, 45 senators voted that the trial would be unconstitutional, making it unlikely that there will be enough Republicans voting to convict.
