How bad was Trump’s accusation against accusation? “My cousin Vinny” is tweeting on Twitter.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump opened his second indictment with a devastating presentation by the House of Representatives showing why the former president’s actions were worthy of conviction and demonstrated the immediate danger that he would not condemn Trump and ban him from the future office. do not have. It was a difficult act to follow.

How did Trump’s legal team – from the bottom of the bar to a downfall with his first team and the refusal of big business and conservative lawyers to represent him – react?

Bruce Castor, the former district attorney in Pennsylvania who is best known for refusing to prosecute Bill Cosby for rape, opened up the defense arguments and let’s say it did not go well.

Here is an example of the Twitter responses:

Before the defense presentation was done, ‘My cousin Vinny’ was waving on Twitter.

What was so bad about Castor’s actions? For one, in what must have been the opening of a particular procedural and jurisdictional defense, it was difficult to identify a consistent narrative thread or specific legal argument he was trying to argue. Castor basically conceded this at the end, saying he had brought up his faltering presentation in response to how well the House Managers were making their case.

“I will be honest with you. We have changed what we are going to do because we think the presentation of the Home Managers has been done well, ‘Castor said.

He further said that the legal team had answers to the merits case raised by the House Managers at the beginning of the trial, and that they would eventually come to that conclusion. But because the executives offered the meat of the alleged crime up front, rather than simply debating Senate jurisdiction, he said the Trump team was unprepared. “I thought the first part of the case, which was tantamount to a motion to dismiss, would just be about jurisdiction,” Castor said. “We have counter-arguments against everything they have argued, and you will hear it later in the case.”

From the perspective of pleasing his client, the house-eat-my-homework routine was not even the worst part. In an effort to convince the Senate that the indictment was unnecessary, Castor has repeatedly pointed out that the American people have already voted Trump out of office – the opposite of what Trump said in his months of accusations of election theft, which ultimately inspired. his supporters to attack the Capitol.

“The American people just talked and they just changed administration,” Castor said. Therefore, it is not necessary to accuse Trump and ban him from the future office, because the electoral system – which Trump only spent two months to reverse, and which wanted to stop the mob on January 6 by force – works out. “The people are smart enough … to choose a new administration if they do not like the old one,” Castor said. “And they just did!”

Inexplicably Castor repeats the Trump lost the election so you do not have to punish him for trying to steal it a few times before he goes to the ground, the former president will certainly appreciate even less: if the Senate has decided that he does not have the jurisdiction to try Trump, he can always be prosecuted by the Department of Justice.

“After he’s not in the office, you’re going to arrest him,” Castor said. “So there is no opportunity for the president of the United States to indulge in January at the end of his term and just leave unscathed. The Department of Justice does know what to do to such people and so far I have not seen any activity in that direction. ”

And again, these would mean that you have to spend for these processes. After speaking, the defense team then switched to David Schoen, who delivered a more passionate and somewhat more coherent case that the current accusation is a ‘partisan witch hunt’ against the president, without any fact.

Finally, there may have been a strategy for the double act. Schoen’s actions were an aggressive attack on accusation managers, one of whom had just messed up his soul over the devastating trauma he and his family experienced on the day of the attack on Capitol. Castor’s bizarre and nonsensical struggle may have served as a palate for palate, so Schoen’s critical critique of the Housemate did not directly follow the powerful actions of the indictment manager, Jamie Raskin. All the president’s defenders need to do is ultimately stop 17 Republican senators from joining the Democrats.

Eventually, only six Republicans joined the Democrats to vote that a trial of a former president is constitutional and that it should continue – Sens. Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse – which means there appear to be more than enough votes for Republicans to release Trump, no matter what arguments they hear. Cassidy was the only Republican who initially indicated a desire to reject the case to change his voice this time, with minority leader Mitch McConnell – who apparently spoke positively of the accusation early on. To get Trump off the hook.

Castor and Schoen may have made it an embarrassment for them to stick with Trump, but if the past four years prove anything, it was the boundaries of shame as a power in politics.