Jan 20, 2020 · A group of White House and private lawyers are defending Trump in a Senate trial, trying to convince at least 34 of the 100 senators that the president should be acquitted on the charges of abuse ...
Jan 26, 2021 · Former President Donald Trump is still working to assemble a full legal team for his Senate impeachment trial, people familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday, even as he has begun to craft a ...
Feb 01, 2021 · Following a sudden exodus of lawyers who had been working on the former president’s legal defense, Trump's team settled on Bruce L. Castor Jr. and David Schoen to lead his defense in the ...
Nov 21, 2019 · “[The memo is] ultimately an argument that the president can order targeted killings of Americans without ever having to account to anyone outside the executive branch,” ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer said to the Los Angeles Times. For those actions alone, President Obama should have been impeached and removed from office.
Michael Cohen | |
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Cohen in 2019 | |
Born | Michael Dean Cohen August 25, 1966 Lawrence, New York, U.S. |
Education | American University (BA) Cooley Law School (JD) |
Political party | Democratic (before 2002, 2004–2017, 2018–present) Republican (2002–2004, 2017–2018) |
White House Counsel | |
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Incumbent Dana Remus since January 20, 2021 | |
Formation | 1943 |
First holder | Samuel Rosenman |
Impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump | |
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Accused | Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States |
Proponents | Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House of Representatives) Adam Schiff (Chair of the House Intelligence Committee) Jerry Nadler (Chair of the House Judiciary Committee) |
Don McGahn | |
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President | Donald Trump |
Preceded by | Neil Eggleston |
Succeeded by | Emmet Flood |
Chair of the Federal Election Commission |
Alan Dershowitz listens to President Trump at a White House event in December. The lawyer will deliver constitutional arguments during Trump's Senate impeachment trial. Alan Dershowitz listens to President Trump at a White House event in December.
Here are more details about the team. Pat Cipollone. Cipollone played a key role in the House impeachment inquiry, writing aggressive letters to House investigators to deny congressional subpoenas. He mainly stayed out of public view, but he will now take a more prominent role.
Cipollone played a key role in the House impeachment inquiry, writing aggressive letters to House investigators to deny congressional subpoenas. He mainly stayed out of public view, but he will now take a more prominent role.
Trump picked him to replace Don McGahn as White House counsel in October 2018. Two of his deputies — Pat Philbin and Mike Purpura — will also play a role.
Shortly after the news broke that Starr would join Trump's team, Lewinsky tweeted her reaction: "this is definitely an 'are you f***ing kidding me?' kinda day," she wrote.
Starr is the former independent counsel whose investigation of Clinton led to the president's impeachment. Starr 's probe focused on an affair between the president and White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Dershowitz told Here & Now earlier this month that he believes Trump has not committed an impeachable offense. "I'm not opposed to impeachment, but I strongly oppose impeachment on grounds like obstruction of Congress or abuse of power," he said. "Those are not in the Constitution, and the framers would never have accepted that in the Constitution."
In the 1980s, Ms. Raskin worked for William F. Weld, an assistant attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, who later became the governor of Massachusetts and is now running a quixotic campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Mr. Dershowitz, an acquaintance of Mr. Trump’s since the 1990s, has become a Fox News staple, attacking the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and defending Mr. Trump’s right to fire James B. Comey as F.B.I. director.
Pam Bondi, who served as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019, has been considered a rising Republican star. When she endorsed Mr. Trump for president in 2016, she said they had been friends for years.
A former federal prosecutor, Mr. Ray had planned to indict Mr. Clinton when he left office for the same crimes considered during the impeachment. But Mr. Ray and Mr. Clinton struck a deal that prevented Mr. Clinton from being prosecuted in return for surrendering his law license and paying a $25,000 fine.
The president’s legal team must maintain his support in the Senate while arguing his case to a broader jury: voters watching at home.
President Trump has expanded his legal team in hopes of securing a quick acquittal in his Senate impeachment trial. The lawyers he has enlisted include frequent guests on Fox News and former independent counsels who investigated President Bill Clinton. Together, they must maintain Mr. Trump’s support in the Senate while arguing his case ...
Schiff was the de facto leader of the impeachment inquiry and has, over the years, cemented his status as Public Enemy No. 1 for Trump and his allies. During the trial, Schiff, 59, a close Pelosi ally and former federal prosecutor who earned his law degree from Harvard Law School, could be afforded an open-ended soliloquy to outline the president’s alleged misconduct. Giving Trump’s political nemesis an uninterrupted stage on the Senate floor could test the notoriously mercurial president’s patience as he vacillates between a desire for a quick, dismissive trial and a robust one that includes a slate of his hand-picked witnesses. Trump has even mused about calling Schiff himself as a witness, though it’s highly unlikely that Senate Republicans would agree to such a move. Pelosi said Schiff will serve as the lead manager.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) Nadler, a vocal Bill Clinton defender when the House impeached him in 1998, earned his spot atop the Judiciary panel in part based on a pitch that he has the constitutional know-how to lead a potential impeachment of the president.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday announced her picks for one of the most sought-after jobs on Capitol Hill: impeachment manager.
While she isn’t a lawyer, Demings, 62, has an extensive background in law enforcement and was a standout during the impeachment hearings. Demings, the former Orlando police chief, is one of just two Democrats who sits on both the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, giving her a uniquely prevalent role during the House’s two-part impeachment ...
His committee’s efforts to pursue special counsel Robert Mueller’s evidence largely receded into the background while Schiff’s panel led the Ukraine probe — but the Judiciary Committee returned to the spotlight when it came time to draft articles of impeachment.
Jeffries, 49, has quickly risen through the ranks since his election to the House in 2012, and he has been floated as a future House speaker. Jeffries, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, was chosen as the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus after his party took control of the chamber in the 2018 midterm elections. He has stood out in committee hearings and on cable television as a vocal critic of Trump — and a forceful Pelosi ally and defender. While dozens of House Democrats were announcing their support for an impeachment inquiry last summer, Jeffries remained aligned with the speaker, who was resisting an inquiry until the Ukraine scandal blew up. He got his law degree from New York University.
For the first time in this impeachment process, President Trump’s legal team is presenting his defense directly to Congress. A group of White House and private lawyers are defending Trump in a Senate trial, trying to convince at least 34 of the 100 senators that the president should be acquitted on the charges of abuse of power and obstruction ...
Philbin was part of a small group of Justice lawyers in the hospital room of ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft during a dramatic 2004 showdownbetween the Bush White House lawyers and Justice over whether to reauthorize the program.
Sekulow has argued that Congress is trying to get Trump’s financial records for political purposes rather than for actual legislation, and that obtaining these records would be a distraction from the president’s duties. Both are arguments lower courts rejected.
Cipollone became White House counsel in December 2018. Now that he’s in a more central role during impeachment, Republican lawmakers have describedCipollone as the “quarterback” for Trump’s legal strategy.
Trump’s legal team notably does not include House Republicans who have sat through hours of depositions and vociferously defended the president during the House inquiry and impeachment vote. Instead, we expect those House members to fan out across media outlets and make the case for Trump there. Advertisement.
The Constitution says the chief justice presides when the person facing trial is the current president of the United States, but senators preside in other cases, one source said. CNN's Caroline Kelly and Jeremy Herb contributed to this report.
Charlie Condon, a former South Carolina attorney general who now works in private practice in Charleston, has been approached about joining the legal team, two people familiar with the matter said. In a brief statement to CNN on Monday evening, Condon wrote: "I am not representing former President Trump. Thanks.".
The expectation is still, however, that it will take up much of February and wrap up by month's end, if not sooner. The second impeachment is also expected to differ from the first in another key way. Chief Justice John Roberts will not be presiding, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
He lostto Democrat Kevin Steele, who chose to prosecute Cosby. Story continues below advertisement.
Story continues below advertisement. Castor and Schoen will take on the job after Trump’s previous attorneys left over his insistence that they argue he actually won the 2020 presidential election, a false claim the former president has often repeated since November, The Washington Postreported Sunday.
Constand and Castor confidentially settledthe defamation claim in 2019. Advertisement. Castor did not immediately return a request for comment late Sunday. As former president Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial nears, lawmakers discussed on Jan. 31 whether he should be held accountable for the Capitol breach.
Days before Jeffrey Epstein’sdeath in 2019, Schoen also met with the financier, who was accused of sexually abusing dozens of girls. Schoen has publicly disputedofficial reports that Epstein killed himself inside the Manhattan jail, and maintains his belief that Epstein may have been murdered.
Here is how Rep. Liz Cheney (R–Wyo.), the third-ranking Republican in the House and one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, interpreted the events of that day: "The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution." Sen. Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.), then the Senate majority leader, agreed that "the mob was fed lies" and "provoked by the president."
Responding to Donald Trump's impeachment in a 14-page brief filed today, his lawyers argue that he cannot be tried by the Senate because he is no longer president and that his promotion of the baseless claim that Joe Biden stole the presidential election, which inspired hundreds of his followers to launch a deadly attack on the Capitol last month, was protected by the First Amendment. And by the way, they say, there is "insufficient evidence" to conclusively determine that Trump's wild claims of massive election fraud were false.
Some of the steps Trump took in the service of his election fantasy were by themselves clear abuses of power. The trial memorandum notes, for example, that he "tried to induce Michigan's top Republican legislative officials to violate Michigan law by rejecting the popular vote and selecting a Trump slate of electors." In a January 2 telephone conversation, Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" the votes necessary to overturn Biden's victory in that state, warning that failing to do so would be "a criminal offense" and "a big risk for you." Trump publicly and privately urged Vice President Mike Pence to block congressional affirmation of Biden's victory. Since that is a power the vice president does not actually have, Trump was soliciting Pence to do something illegal.
Trump nevertheless told reporters his pre-riot speech was "totally appropriate." According to his lawyers' brief, he simply "expressed his opinion that the election results were suspect." To the extent that the impeachment "alleges his opinion is factually in error," they say, Trump "denies this allegation." More generally, the brief says, Trump after the election "exercised his First Amendment right" to "express his belief that the election results were suspect, since with very few exceptions, under the convenient guise of Covid-19 pandemic 'safeguards,' states' election laws and procedures were changed by local politicians or judges without the necessary approvals from state legislatures."
Those provisions do not apply to Trump, "since he is no longer 'President,'" his lawyers say. "The constitutional provision requires that a person actually hold office to be impeached. Since the 45th President is no longer 'President,' the clause 'shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for…' is impossible for the Senate to accomplish, and thus the current proceeding before the Senate is void ab initio as a legal nullity that runs patently contrary to the plain language of the Constitution." They also argue that "removal from office by the Senate of the President is a condition precedent which must occur before, and jointly with, 'disqualification' to hold future office," meaning that a Senate trial cannot be justified by the possibility of disqualifying Trump from future federal office.
Michigan State law professor Brian Kalt gets into greater detail in his comprehensive 2001 treatment of the subject. While the record is mixed and often ambiguous, Kalt argues, the weight of the evidence supports impeachment and trial of former federal officials. Still, he calls it "a close and unsettled question." George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who is more inclined to credit Trump's argument, likewise says the constitutionality of impeaching or trying a former president is "a close question upon which people of good faith can disagree."
Since Trump's acquittal seems to be a foregone conclusion, I'm not sure how clear a message the trial will send on that score. But there is value in laying out the details of this shameful and horrifying episode. Even if only a handful of Republicans favor conviction, a bipartisan vote will signal that Trump did much more, and much worse, than express an opinion.