Last updated on February 18th, 2021 at 02:07 am
There was a large contrast between the two legal teams during the Trump impeachment trial. The Democratic House Managers were well prepared and effective. The Trump lawyers were seemingly unprepared and drew laughter and derision from Conservatives and Liberals alike.
The former president’s legal team can claim it “won” the case. Their efforts, though, did little to burnish their reputations. On Tuesday, the New York Times published a report on the lawyers and in that report, David Schoen complains that he was marginalized by Bruce Castor and Michael van der Veen.
Schoen told Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt, “Again, the president made clear that I was to take the lead and do most of the presenting. However, when Bruce came in, he brought his partner Mike and several other lawyers to help them. He immediately began setting an agenda and assigning roles. My role was marginalized.”
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
The lawyer, who reportedly almost quit before the trial was over, takes some of the blame. He continued, “My personality is such that I simply was not comfortable asserting myself and I just accepted the agenda and figured I would just do the best job I could at whatever I was assigned. That was my mistake and my shortcoming.”
You can read Haberman and Schmidt’s entire piece here
Todd Neikirk is a New Jersey based politics and technology writer. His work has been featured in psfk.com, foxsports.com and hillreporter.com. He enjoys sports, politics, comic books and spending time at the shore with his family.
