The team, led by Butch Bowers, has run away.
All five impeachment lawyers expected to represent former President Donald Trump have called it quits, sources told ABC News.
The team, led by South Carolina attorney Butch Bowers, resigned in part due to disagreements over how to set up Trump’s defense, the sources said. The lawyers planned to challenge the constitutionality of holding a trial, as Trump is now a former president.
Disagreements over strategy varied, sources told ABC News, but Trump wanted his team to claim there was electoral fraud, while the former president’s lawyers and some top advisers wanted the focus no longer on the constitutionality of a trial with the president stayed down. in the office.
A source close to the former president described the change as a “mutual decision” between the parties.
Trump was charged by the House on Jan. 13 with a single article for “inciting insurrection” following the violent siege of the Capitol that killed a police officer and four others and left members of Congress and their staff fearful for their lives. The uprising, which took place on Jan. 6, was preceded by a Trump rally when he told his followers to go to the Capitol and repeatedly told them to fight for him.
“The Democrats’ attempts to overthrow a president who has already left are totally unconstitutional and so bad for our country. In fact, 45 senators have already voted it unconstitutional. We’ve done a lot of work, but have yet to do so. not made a final decision in our legal team, which will be made soon, ”Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, told ABC News Saturday.
The Senate trial will begin the week of February 8. Two-thirds of the Senate – or 67 senators – should vote to condemn Trump to be successful. That means 17 GOP senators should be on the side of the Democrats.
Sources think there will be another round of additions to the team in the coming days, although the process is far from over with just over a week to go. Many attorneys who worked or represented Trump in the latest trial refuse to defend him in the Senate.
Trump’s former top attorney, Jay Sekulow, who represented him in his first impeachment trial, will not participate in this trial. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, also said he will not represent the former president after he appeared at the same rally that preceded the January 6 siege of the Capitol.
The attorneys besides Bowers who will no longer represent Trump are Deborah Barbier, Josh Howard, Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris.
Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C., who urged Bowers to take the case, told his Senate GOP colleagues on Jan. 21 that Bowers would represent Trump.
Senate Republicans had asked for the trial to be postponed, to which the Democrats agreed, following the delivery of the impeachment article, so that Trump could work with his still-forming legal team.
Mark Osborne of ABC News contributed to this report.