Trump's impeachment attorney admits he's totally winging it

Bruce Castor, one of Donald Trump’s defense attorneys for his second impeachment trial, admitted before Congress on Tuesday afternoon that Trump’s legal team was thrown off by how “well done” the House impeachment managers’ presentation at the top of the trial was and had improvised a response after throwing out all their preplanned remarks.

“I’ll be quite frank with you,” Castor, a former Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, district attorney who infamously refused to prosecute Bill Cosby, said. “We changed what we were going to do, on account that we thought that House managers’ presentation was well done.”

Impeachment managers had presented, among other arguments, a 13-minute video outlining the attack on the Capitol in chronological order, interspersed with Trump’s remarks egging on the violence.

But, Castor assured the assembled lawmakers, Trump’s legal team do have responses to the arguments raised by the House impeachment managers — they just won’t be sharing them right now.

“I wanted you to know that we have responses to those things,” Castor said. He explained that he thought that he was initially supposed to be discussing jurisdiction, but would provide further arguments later.

“We have counterarguments to everything that they raised, and you will hear them later on in the case from Mr. van der Veen and myself,” Castor said, referring to fellow impeachment defense attorney Michael van der Veen.

Castor was brought on to Trump’s team a little over a week ago, on Feb. 1.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, in a case filed against Trump in 2020 by a candidate for Congress, van der Veen, while representing the congressional candidate, accused Trump of having suppressed votes by making baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Van der Veen has also referred to Trump as a “f—king crook,” one of his former clients told the outlet.

BRUCE CASTOR: I’ll be quite frank with you. We changed what we were going to do on account that we thought that the House managers’ presentation was well done. And I wanted you to know that we have responses to those things.

 

I thought that what the first part of the case was, which was the equivalent of a motion to dismiss, was going to be about jurisdiction alone, and one of the fellows who spoke for the House managers, who was a former criminal defense attorney, seemed to suggest that there’s something nefarious that we were discussing jurisdiction and trying to get the case dismissed.

 

But this is where it happens in the case because jurisdiction is the first thing that has to be found. We have counter arguments to everything that they raised, and you will hear them later on in the case from Mr. van der Veen and from myself.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.