During the January 2020 indictment process, the Tea Party Patriots called for action, encouraged supporters to call convention offices, offered conference calls to discuss messages and discussion points, and sent materials to voters. The group also sent 47 tweets condemning or criticizing the process. So far, it has shared only five accusation-related tweets since the House of Representatives charged Trump again on Jan. 13, according to a POLITICO review.
“It would be news to me if there was a serious conservative organization involved,” said one conservative strategist.
The reluctance of conservative organizations to join the accusation fracas suggests that the political drama does not motivate Republican voters as they and others become confident in Trump’s acquittal. The former president may be able to enter a historic second indictment with little infrastructure for his defense, but Senate Republicans will certainly not care what kind of defense they offer. Forty-five of them voted that an accusation under the presidential constitution is unconstitutional – all but to ensure that 67 votes are not required for conviction.
As a measure of Trump’s internal confidence, an assistant confirmed Monday that there are no plans for the former president – who believes he is his own best lawyer – to testify in his own defense next week, despite reports that it was considered. However, Trump adviser Jason Miller would not rule out the possibility that the former president would act as his own replacement with media appearances during the indictment.
Yet there are some disputes within Trump’s ranks over what strategy they should follow, as Trump defends himself against the charges that he helped incite the deadly riot on Capitol Hill that led to the deaths of five people. While Trump wants to use his trial to reject voter fraud and advocate for election reforms, the few supporters who still man him say they are the best way to argue what the vast majority of Senate Republicans on record say: that the accusation itself is not constitutional. .
One assistant who was involved in Trump’s defense, and who was not authorized to speak in public, said there were no plans underway for the communications team to discuss election fraud as part of their messages of accusation, despite reports that the former president wants to do so.
“I will be focused on constitutionality,” the assistant said, referring to the indictments against former president Richard Nixon in 1974, which were discontinued after he resigned and never voted to the full floor.
‘[Nixon] left and House Democrats dropped the case and continued with the affairs of the American people, “the assistant added, looking at a discussion point before next week’s hearing.
Using a messaging strategy is not the only obstacle that Trump and his assistants face. It was also difficult to put together a real legal team. Over the weekend, five lawyers who were apparently preparing to represent the former president suddenly left. The group has devised a two-pronged defense strategy that focuses on whether the Constitution allows accusations of a former president and whether the definition of incitement applies to remarks made by Trump in the White House a few hours before his supporters at 6 p.m. January the American Capitol stormed.
But their approach has irritated Trump by the lack of attention to his false fraud claims. The former president announced Sunday that two new attorneys, David Schoen and Bruce Castor, Jr., will take over his defense. A source close to Trump’s team said that from now on there is no expectation that additional lawyers will be formally added to the team, including Jenna Ellis and Rudy Giuliani, the two advocates who are Trump’s unsuccessful pursuit of the 2020 election results to turn, led.
Miller, who has been in regular contact with Schoen for the past two weeks, told Fox News on Monday night that the former president’s lawyers will meet the deadline to submit a brief briefing on Tuesday in response to the article of the accusation made by the House was accepted. He did not list election fraud among the topics when he previewed the contents of Trump’s defense.
“The compressed timeline made things interesting,” Miller said in a separate interview with POLITICO. “It’s good that it’s pretty simple.”
Miller remains one of the few Trump assistants to be publicly accused. In the run-up to the trial, he is with a small group of former White House campaign assistants and officials assisting with research, congressional issues, surrogate operations and quick response. These include Francis Brennan, Dean Cleary, Sonny Nelson, Ali Pardo and Ted Goodman from Trump’s 2020 campaign, and Ben Williamson, Ory Rinat and Sam Brown of the White House.
While the Republican National Committee has worked with Trump’s behind-the-scenes prosecution team, they are not expected to play a role that will be confronted in public during next week’s trial, nor are they planning a launching a centralized website aimed at Democratic lawmakers in support of the indictment process – something they did in the fall of 2019 with their ‘Stop the Madness’ campaign.