At one point, Mr. Trump told the vice president that he had spoken to Mark Martin, the former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, who he said told him that Mr. Pence has the power. Mr. Mr. Pence Trump assures that he does not. Mr. Trump had the vice president defend his reasoning in a meeting with lawyers that Rudolph W. Giuliani helped present.
Both parties conceded that they have no clear picture of how many senators in the party may ultimately vote to convict Trump.
Mr. Toomey said that Mr. Trump has “slipped into a kind of madness” since the election and that he has effectively “disqualified” himself from ever being a candidate again. But a day after calling Trump’s behavior “impeccable”, Mr. Toomey argued that an accusation would be impractical since Trump was already on his way to the exit.
“I think the best way for our country, Chuck, is for the president to resign and leave as soon as possible,” he told host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I admit it may not be likely, but I think it would be best.”
In the conversation with co-workers about the prospect of another accusation, Mr. Trump hit by the fact that few people from his defense team would be part of a new process in the Senate hearing last year.
According to a person informed about the planning, Jay Sekulow, who served as his attorney general, and two other private attorneys, Marty Raskin and Jane Raskin, will not participate in a future indictment. Pat A. Cipollone, the White House Adviser, or Patrick F. Philbin, his deputy.
This time, only a few of his allies on Capitol Hill offered to speak in defense as well. Among those who have, many people have used calls for ‘unity’ to argue against accusations or to ask for Trump’s resignation. In most cases, lawmakers were adamant that Democrats should let the country “move” among those who, even after Wednesday’s violence, voted to throw out election results in the major swing states, Mr. Biden won based on allegations of widespread voter fraud that courts in and the states themselves have said it is fake.