Last Wednesday afternoon, when the legal team of former President Donald J. Trump met in a conference room in a special suite at the Trump Hotel in Washington, a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump, Justin Clark, made an announcement.
Mr. Clark told one of the attorneys, Bruce L. Castor Jr., that Mr. Trump, after his widespread actions a day earlier, did not want him to appear on television during the trial.
Mr. Castor got up from his chair and angrily started yelling at Mr. Clark, arguing that Mr. Trump was wrong to fire him. The back and forth became so hot that Mr. Castor left the conference room.
He later apologized to Mr Clark. But the tense exchange was just one example of how Mr. Trump’s hastily assembled legal team – a jumble of political hands, a personal injury lawyer, a former prosecutor and a longtime defense attorney, most of whom did not particularly like or trust him. each other – collided, stumbled and regrouped through the accusation, under the watchful and sometimes angry eye of his client.
The result was an airplane held in place while trying to land.
This article is based on interviews with half a dozen members of the legal team and others involved in the process, which ultimately led to Mr. Trump has been acquitted.
“You must remember that we literally had one week and one day to prepare the defense, and that we were all people who had never met,” one of the lawyers, David I. Schoen, said in a statement said after being approached. for this article.
In the days after the House Mr. Trump has been accused of his role in inciting the January 6 riot, Mr. Trump and his assistants are trying to put together a legal team. Several lawyers who have represented him in his indictment in the past have made it clear that they would not be involved this time. Other high-profile advocates for white-collar workers were afraid to work for him because of the political setback and the fear that Mr. Trump would refuse to pay his legal bills.
Two weeks before the Senate hearing was due to begin, Mr. Trump announced that he has appointed a team led by Butch Bowers, a South Carolina attorney who has defended many of the state’s leading politicians. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Schoen, who is based in Atlanta, appointed to, as Mr. Shoe, ‘co-quarterbacks’ with mr. To be Bowers.
But Mr. Bowers and four other attorneys who represented Mr. Trump works, about 10 days before the trial, suddenly divorced him. Mr. Bowers and Mr. Trump had no chemistry, and some people familiar with the events said that Mr. Trump wanted the team to make his false allegations of a stolen election, something Mr. Bowers did not want to do. Mr Schoen disputes the bill, saying Trump has never put him under pressure over the issue.
Nevertheless, the team suddenly needs more lawyers. Stephen R. Castor, the leading Republican congressional attorney who took on Democrats during the first indictment of Mr. Trump, recommended his cousin, Bruce L. Castor Jr., a former Pennsylvania prosecutor.
Mr Schoen believed he would still be at the head of the legal team. But according to Mr. Shoe, then mr. Castor and several other attorneys he worked with in Philadelphia – including a personal injury lawyer named Michael T. van der Veen – took over the defense.
“Once again, the president has made it clear that I would take the lead and do most of the presentations,” he said. Schoen said. ‘However, when Bruce came in, he brought his partner Mike and several other lawyers to help them. He immediately began to draw up an agenda and assign roles. My role is marginalized. ”
Mr Schoen said he had wrongly refused to comply with Mr Schoen’s plan. To push Castor back.
“My personality is such that I simply was not comfortable asserting myself, and I just accepted the agenda and thought I could only do the best job, no matter what I was assigned,” he said. . Schoen said. “It was my fault and my shortcoming.”
Mr Schoen, who said he had been in regular contact with Trump, added that he had made another mistake: he did not tell Trump that Castor was going to play such a prominent role in the public arguments.
Mr. Schoen would still want to make the first argument on the first day of the trial. Home managers began the process with an attractive presentation that included an icy compilation of video clips of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Mr Castor then told Schoen that he wanted to address the jurors.
“I admired his courage to jump right in,” he said. Schoen said. “Unfortunately, he has been pretty thoroughly pledged by the media and a number of people think the agenda might need to be reconsidered.”
Mr. Van der Veen said in an interview that Mr. Castor acted to speak because he believed it would be a way to reduce the emotion in the room.
But Mr. Trump was furious about the tortuous, low-energy performance of Mr. Castor. The former president, among others, Mr. Clark called to risk the afternoon.
“Bruce is not going to be on TV again,” he said. Trump said, referring to the television presentations from the floor of the Senate. Mr. Trump also wanted Mr. Clark joins the legal team and has to argue in the room. Other advisers told the former president that it was a bad idea to shake up the defense in the middle of the trial.
But Mr. Clark told Mr. Van der Veen said that he Mr. Castor must inform that he will no longer present.
But Wednesday afternoon, when Mr. Clark arriving at the Trump International Hotel and joining the group in the conference room of a private suite on the first floor called the “townhouse”, it was clear that Mr. Van der Veen did not get the message.
So Mr Clark did it, and Mr. Castor blew up.
Mr Castor did not respond to a request for comment. But both Mr. Van der Veen and mr. Schoen said that they are of the opinion that Mr. Castor was unfairly pledged.
What happened next is the subject of debate.
Two people involved in the attempt said Mr. Clark, as well as Alex Cannon, another lawyer who worked on the Trump campaign and for the Trump organization, took over the text that the lawyers would use to present and told them not to deviate from them. The people said that Jason Miller, a political adviser to Mr. Trump, watched the finished texts. And Ory Rinat, a former assistant in the White House, helped develop the visual presentations.
Both mr. Shoe and mr. Van der Veen denied that the Trump assistants prescribed the offers.
“I do not take credit for someone else’s work, nor should they take it for me,” he said. Van der Veen said.
Thursday night there was another problem: Mr. Schoen has a dispute with mr. Miller had about which video clips were going to be played. He paused briefly, but then said he would not present the next day and would sit with the other advocates at the table in the Senate. Mr. Trump’s advisers struggled to figure out how Castor, who did not want to see the client, would take over a larger portion of the offer on Friday.
Mr. Trump went directly to Mr. Shoe issued, and after they spoke, Mr. Schoen said he would make his submission anyway. While the former president had a relationship with Mr. Schoen developed, he also praised the performance of mr. Van der Veen praised other members of the team on Friday.
Mr Schoen, whose mother had died of the coronavirus a few weeks earlier and who blew a kiss into the air after his final presentation, said that Mr. Trump was far from a micro-administrator.
“He literally called me a few days a day for a few days to tell me how much he appreciated me and had confidence in me and that I needed to have more confidence in myself,” he said. Schoen said, who did not participate in the Senate proceedings. Saturday due to the Jewish Sabbath.
But Mr. Schoen added that he Mr. Trump had to keep more in the loop about who was going to speak at the trial.
“I think I let him down,” he said.