WASHINGTON – When former President Donald J. Trump’s second Senate prosecution hearing opens this week, two defense attorneys will be pushed into the national spotlight: David I. Schoen, a civil rights and criminal defense attorney in Alabama, and Bruce L. Castor Jr. ., a former district attorney in Montgomery County, Pa., outside Philadelphia.
Neither has worked with the other before, and it remains unclear who has the leading advocate in the team. Their insecure relationship began when Mr. Trump suddenly appointed them when his first defense team was falling apart; they are now trying to organize without knowing much what to expect.
“We do not know what the agenda is,” he said. Schoen said in an interview late last week, pointing out that Senate leaders had yet to announce rules for the trial. “We do not know what the order of business will be. We do not know how much time there will be. ”
Mr. Schoen, 62, studied at Boston College Law School and had an eclectic, decades-long legal career.
He has done extensive work on issues of public interest and civil rights in the South on issues such as police and prison violence and access to the ballot. Among his many cases, he played a key role in a lawsuit that challenged Alabama’s foster care system and led to improvements, and he represented the Ku Klux Klan by a law banning them from marching while wearing hoods, successfully challenge and without paying a fee. The American bar honors Mr. Schoen in 1995 for his voluntary legal efforts.
He also worked as an attorney for criminal defense, representing a variety of sometimes infamous clients, including accused gangs, rapists and murderers. As a staunch supporter of Israel, he has also sued Palestinian terrorists and brought a lawsuit against Simon & Schuster for alleged misrepresentations in former President Jimmy Carter’s 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”.
Richard Cohen, the former president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that although he was of the opinion that Mr. Trump deserves to be convicted, he said. Shoe is a “good lawyer and a good person” who is attracted to complicated and challenging cases and not afraid to tackle sometimes unpopular clients.
Mr. Schoen, an observant Jew, requested that Trump’s indictment be interrupted if it continues at sunset Friday, so that he can keep the Sabbath until it ends Saturday night. Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York and the majority leader, said he would “accommodate” the request, which could extend what both parties hoped would work quickly.
Mr. Castor, 59, who did not respond to a request for an interview, brings a different set of experiences. After acquiring his rights at George Washington University, he served two terms as an elected district attorney in Montgomery County and later as the Attorney General of Pennsylvania. He has since worked as a defense attorney.
He is best known for his ignorant defense of his 2005 decision not to prosecute Bill Cosby after Temple University employee Andrea Constand accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her.
Mr. Castor lost the re-election against an opponent who criticized the handling of the case and charged Cosby with serious indecent assault. He tried to drop the charge, and Cosby’s defense team called Castor as a witness during a trial in 2016. He argued that his decision not to prosecute was appropriate.
“I have come to the conclusion that the matter could never improve and improve over time Mr. Cosby’s confession,” said Mr. Castor said at the stand. “Andrea Constand’s own actions during that year destroyed her credibility as a viable witness.”
But the judge allowed the case to continue, and Mr. Cosby was convicted in 2018. Me. Constand later sued Castor for defamation, and the two settled out of court in 2019. Separately, Castor had me. Constand sued, arguing that she had filed the defamation suit to influence an election in which he could not regain his office as district attorney; a judge dismissed the case.
Mr. Castor was recommended for Mr. Trump and his advisers through his cousin, Stephen R. Castor, an attorney from the Republic of the House, who helped lead the president’s early defense against his first accusation in 2019. Stephen Castor clashed with Democrats over Trump’s efforts. to pressure Ukraine to announce a corruption investigation into Joseph R. Biden Jr., his political rival.
The forces that Mr. Shoe to the world of mr. Trump dressed, traces back to the 1990s when he represented two prisoners of organized crime. Mr. Schoen argued that prosecutors improperly withheld evidence that would help the defense.
Andrew Weissmann was one of those prosecutors. When the special councilor leading the Russian investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, mr. Hiring Weissmann as deputy, he becomes a favorite target of Trump allies who want to discredit the broader investigation. Mr. Schoen has Mr. Weissmann criticized Fox News and other conservative news outlets.
The relationship came closer after Mr. Mueller’s office was convicted of Roger J. Stone jr., Trump’s longtime friend and adviser, for crimes such as lying to Congress and tampering. Mr. Schoen rejected the appeal of mr. Stone deals before Trump grants him forgiveness. Mr Schoen said he believed he had been recommended by the bond for the indictment.
Mr. Castor and Schoen must now defend the former president against a charge of ‘incitement to insurrection’ related to the January 6 riot at the Capitol. The case focuses on Trump’s month-long campaign to make his followers. believes the falsehood that he won re-election but was denied victory due to fraud, and his admonitions to his supporters during a rally in Washington shortly before the riot to go to the Capitol and ‘fight like hell’ like the Congress formally tried to confirm Mr Biden’s victory.
Both mr. Castor as mnr. Schoen has previously made headlines for other cases in which they have expressed religious expressions that are not necessarily supported by facts.
In 2002, when Mr. Castor was a district attorney, he fought the release from prison of a man acquitted of a rape by a DNA test. The prisoner, Bruce Godschalk, confessed to the detectives, but withdrew long before his trial, but Mr. Castor opposed the testing of his DNA.
When scientific evidence showed the prosecutors’ case against Mr. Godschalk refutes, doubts mr. Castor the validity of the test results and admits that he has ‘no scientific basis’ for it. Even after further investigation the findings were confirmed and he was forced to arrest Mr. Godschalk too late to go, Mr. Castor still expressed doubts about the innocence of the man.
Mr Schoen has recently made headlines over the belief that it clashes with an official conclusion: a medical examiner’s ruling that Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraceful financier and accused sex offender, died in prison in 2019 of suicide.
Nine days before mr. Epstein’s death left Mr. Schoen met him for hours to take over the case. Based on mr. Epstein’s attitude and excitement about new legal strategies and with reference to the nature of his injuries, Mr. Schoen said he did not think he had killed himself.
“I do not think it was a suicide,” he said. Shoe repeated in the interview, adding: ‘I do not know what happened. I do not have a conspiracy theory. ‘
It has been reported that Mr. Trump and his original legal team, led by Butch Bowers, have parted ways over a clash over whether his defense should focus on his false claim that the election was stolen.
But Mr. Schoen said he met a few days before most of the team left, with Mr. Bowers began work, and the explanation for what happened was inaccurate. He said there was a miscommunication, but did not want to offer further details, except to insist that “the president did not pursue an agenda on this.”
Mr. Castor also denied that Mr. Trump has pressured them to focus on the legitimacy of the election results and told a Philadelphia radio station that they would rather focus on ‘technical’ legal arguments.
Together it is expected that Mr. Castor and Mr. Schoen would argue that the Senate does not have constitutional jurisdiction to try former officials (although it has done so before), and that Mr. Trump’s pre-riot rally is shooting down a sentencing conviction in a criminal court over the first amendment.
“It is a tremendous relaxation of passionate political speech, which brings even this action,” said Mr. Schoen said.