Former President Trump’s lawyers are now arguing in the Senate floor against the constitutionality of the impeachment process.
The lawyers who signed on to lead the Trump removal defense team bring a curious story of experience. David Schoen, an experienced civil and criminal attorney, and Bruce L. Castor, Jr., a well-known attorney and former attorney for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, defend him at trial.
The lawyers, both with legal careers sprinkled with curiosities, joined Trump’s team a day after the departure of five members of his defense, which effectively collapsed the team.
Trump’s attorneys are tasked with crafting a defense strategy for a former president who faces the indictment of inciting a deadly insurgency at the U.S. Capitol, which, if convicted, it could also lead to a ban on holding federal office.
For Schoen, whose website says he “focuses primarily on litigating complex civil and criminal cases before the courts of appeal and trial,” Trump is just the latest controversial figure to have brought him the his career in recent years.
Schoen was part of the team of lawyers representing Roger Stone, Trump’s former adviser and friend, in the appeal of his conviction related to issues that Stone filed with the jury. Stone withdrew that appeal after the then president commuted his prison sentence, but before Stone received a full presidential pardon for convictions, including lying to Congress to protect Trump.
Schoen, who has a master’s degree in law from Columbia University and a doctoral jurisprudence from Boston College, according to his biography, is chairman of the criminal justice subcommittee of the American Bar Association of the Civil Rights Litigation Committee.
Meanwhile, Castor served as Montgomery County District Attorney from 2000 to 2008, before serving two terms as county commissioner, according to a statement from Trump’s office.
He was involved in at least one well-known case as a district attorney, when in 2005 he refused to prosecute Bill Cosby after Andrea Constand reported that the actor had improperly touched him at his home in Montgomery County, citing “insufficient credible and admissible evidence.”
Cosby was later tried and convicted in 2018 for sexually assaulting and sexually assaulting Constand at his home in 2004, despite Castor arguing during a pre-trial hearing that the state had already pledged not to prosecute the actor.
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