Source: Senate Television/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Well, that didn’t take long. Just hours after their client’s senate acquittal, President Trump’s “all the best people” are attacking each other in the press for their widely-panned defense performance.
“I thought, ‘This guy’s career is going to disappear. I don’t know how he’s going to get up in the morning,’” attorney David Schoen said of his co-counsel Bruce Castor, Jr. “But he didn’t… He still thought he did a good job.”
In an interview with Jewish Insider, Schoen described a chaotic process that took place largely without direct input from the client.
“[Trump’s team] asked me if I would work with [Castor], if I would take the lead and so on, but then [Castor] would help me and he has a firm that can help and all that,” Schoen told JI. “I’m not sure that message was communicated to him clearly enough, because he never seemed to quite understand that I was supposed to be the lead in the case.”
Schoen claims that he was brought on to Trump’s impeachment defense team before Castor and his partner Michael Van der Veen, a personal injury attorney from Philadelphia. But then the two lawyers shoved Schoen aside and planned the defense themselves, leaving the Alabama civil rights attorney with a minimal speaking role.
“I wasn’t assertive. I didn’t tell them — I sort of did, I thought, but anyway they weren’t hearing it that I was supposed to be the lead person — but it’s just not my personality,” Schoen said. “They have a whole firm there. I’m just not going to say to another person I’m a better lawyer.”
Gosh, it’s really a shame that David Schoen’s inability to advocate for himself prevented him from advocating for his client. Which he would have done much better than the lawyers who muscled him out of the way. AHEM.
“The House put on a pretty good presentation. [Castor] seemed to think he was the best lawyer on the team, or something. So he stood up and said, ‘I think I better jump in here,’” Schoen recounted. “He jumped in and obviously it was like a filibuster. It was not a good presentation.”
Castor had barely finished speaking when the media filled with accounts of Trump’s disappointment with the lawyer. CNN described him as “almost screaming” as he watched the meandering opening statement last Tuesday, after which Schoen says “the president insisted that I speak again.”
But with House impeachment managers scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday and Schoen, an Orthodox Jew, out Saturday for the Sabbath that left just Friday for him to make arguments about jurisdiction and Trump’s “very fine people” comments on Nazi marchers in Charlottesville. You have to pay attention to the entire speech in context, Schoen insists.
According to Schoen, things just fell apart when he left on Friday.
“I was pretty confident based on discussions with the senators… that we would have something like 45 or 46 votes,” he said. “Before Shabbos, I heard like two of the Q&As. I didn’t think that our side answered the questions the way they should have been answered. That might have had some influence.”
Schoen specifically mentioned Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who both voted to convict Trump. The senators asked Trump’s defense team for details about when Trump learned of the Capitol breach and what he did in response — questions the Trump team did not answer specifically.
Also Van der Veen, whose bellicose performance was praised by Trump’s supporters, is kind of a wuss in Schoen’s book. And not just because he whined about having a bad day at the Capitol.
“It’s not nice and all that, but when I heard the news report, I was thinking they must have broken into the guy’s house,” he said of reports that someone spray painted the word “Traitor” in Van der Veen’s driveway. “A crazy guy can do anything at any point. But listen, I’ve been a civil rights lawyer 36 years in Alabama. When I lived there, I lived behind an electric fence. I have two German shepherds and I carry a gun. I was always very aware of threats then, I got many death threats all the time.”
Shaaaaaaade!
David Schoen describes dysfunction within Trump’s impeachment team [Jewish Insider]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.;