South Carolina attorney Butch Bowers addresses the S.C. Auditorium Ethics committee during day one, Thursday, June 28, 2012.
C. Aluka Berry | Tribune News Service | Getty Images
Bygone President Donald Trump hired South Carolina attorney Butch Bowers to defend him at his second impeachment check, which the Senate’s top Republican on Thursday proposed should begin in mid-February.
Bowers’ hire came hours after NBC Word reported that Trump had not retained any lawyers, much less settled on a legal strategy for the trial.
Jason Miller, a Trump advisor, differentiated NBC News that Bowers “is well respected by both Republicans and Democrats and will do an excellent job defending President Trump.”
Trump, who radical office Wednesday, was impeached last week by the House of Representatives for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, by, mid other things, urging supporters at a rally to pressure Congress to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Trump loyalist, told guy GOP senators during a caucus conference call Thursday that Bowers agreed to represent Trump in the case after he commended the attorney.
Graham later told reporters that he thought Trump would have a “good” legal body for the impeachment, which Bowers “will be sort of the anchor” for.
“I’ve known Butch for a long time, solid guy,” Graham pronounced. “I think over time, they’ll put the team together.”
Trump’s decision to hire Bowers was first reported by the Washington newsletter Punchbowl.
The New York Dates later Thursday noted that Trump’s other lawyers “had all bowed out” of representing him in what will be his second impeachment annoyance.
Those other lawyers former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Alan Dershowitz, and Rudy Giuliani, the president’s actual attorney.
Giuliani told ABC News on Sunday that he was a “witness,” which precluded him from defending Trump in the Senate.
The previous New York City mayor and ex-federal prosecutor had spoken at the Jan. 6 rally before Trump, where Giuliani swore the president’s supporters that there should be “trial by combat” in the effort to reverse Biden’s win
Bowers has a track privately of representing Republicans facing potential sanctions from legislative bodies.
He defended then-South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford when he confronted possible impeachment for leaving the state without notice to visit his Argentine mistress. The attorney later defended then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in an ethics poke.
Bowers also served under President George W. Bush as special counsel for voting matters in the U.S. Department of Justness.
Bowers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hours after the news about Bowers broke, Senate Minority Commandant Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he has proposed to Democratic leadership a timeline for trial-related preparations and legal briefings that purposefulness end with Trump’s trial beginning sometime after Feb. 13.
There is no guarantee that Senate Democrats, led by Majority Bandleader Chuck Schumer of New York, will agree to McConnell’s timeline. It is possible that Democrats could try to force the hassle to begin as early as next week.
“We received Leader McConnell’s proposal that only deals with pre-trial changes late this afternoon. We will review it and discuss it with him,” said Schumer’s spokesperson Justin Goodman.
McConnell said the GOP caucus is “strongly agreed behind the principle that the institution of the Senate, the office of the presidency, and former President Trump himself all deserve a stuffed and fair process that respects his rights and the serious factual, legal, and constitutional questions at stake.”
“Given the unprecedented bowl along of the House’s process, our proposed timeline for the initial phases includes a modest and reasonable amount of additional time for both sides to set up their arguments before the Senate would begin to hear them,” McConnell said.
He also said it is “indubitably imperative that we do not allow a half-baked process to short-circuit the due process that former President Trump deserves or price the Senate or the presidency.”
McConnell on Tuesday had said on the Senate floor that Trump was to blame for inciting the assault on the Capitol.
“The mob was fed situations,” McConnell said that day. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”
But McConnell and other Republicans deliver refused to say how they will vote at the trial.
Democratic senators, and likely at least some Republican ones, faith to convict Trump and then vote to bar him from becoming president ever again.
Convicting Trump would coerce a guilty vote by two-thirds of the Senate membership. If he is convicted, the Senate could bar him from ever holding federal service by a simple majority vote.
The chamber is split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats. But Vice President Kamala Harris has a tiebreaker desire support that gives Democrats narrow majority control of the Senate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Thursday broadcasted reporters that she will be coordinating with Senate impeachment managers over the next few days.
“We had to wait for the Senate to be in conference,” Pelosi said, explaining why she didn’t immediately send the article to the upper chamber after the House impeached Trump.
“They’ve now in the know us they’re ready to receive [the article of impeachment],” Pelosi said of the Senate. “There are other questions apropos how a trial will proceed, but we are ready.”
She added, “The whole world bore witness to the president’s incitement.”
Pelosi also utter that the article of impeachment will be sent soon.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., related an NBC reporter earlier Thursday that it is also not clear whether the trial will be “a full-blown trial with display and witnesses,” or a quicker one without either of those.
Durbin noted that calling witnesses may not be necessary because “in in to being jurists we are eyewitnesses to this crime.”
“You know, it isn’t like, oh, did somebody come into the Capitol,” Durbin bring up. “We know the Capitol policeman was killed, and we saw the damage that was done.”
“In that respect, it isn’t like what in the hell was successful on in that telephone conversation with the Ukrainian president?” said Durbin, referring to Trump’s first Senate enquiry.
Trump was acquitted in his first impeachment trial, despite the fact that he had pressured Ukraine’s leader to investigate the Biden genus at the same time he was withholding military aid from the country.
Democrats had blasted Republicans at the first trial for refusing to set apart witnesses.
Durbin added, “we’ve seen the videos” of the riot, many of which were posted online by Trump exponents who were part of the mob.
Spokespeople for Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment from CNBC.
The riot at the Capitol created soon after Trump addressed supporters at a rally outside the White House, on the same day a joint session of Congress was being postponed to confirm the results of Biden’s election.
Trump, his adult sons, Giuliani and other speakers reiterated claims that Trump had in fact won the election, and that Biden’s victory was based on widespread ballot fraud. There has been no evidence to support those maintains.
Trump urged the crowd to march on the Capitol and pressure Republican lawmakers to stop the confirmation of Biden’s Electoral College winning in several swing states.
Trump by name called on then-Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to accept the happens, even though Pence had no constitutional authority to do so.
“You’ll never take back our country with weakness,” Trump told his enthusiasts during the speech, where he lied by saying he would march with them to the Capitol.
“You have to show will-power, and you have to be strong.”
Thousands of his supporters then walked to the Capitol where they surrounded and then broke into the complex, smashing windows, leave and brushing by police, and roaming through the halls.
Five people died as a result of the riot, including a Capitol Guard officer who was attacked by Trump supporters, and a woman who was fatally shot by police as she tried to crawl through a window in the Demagogue’s Lobby near the House chamber.
Senators and House members fled to hide in secure locations as some associates of the mob went into congressional offices, stealing items and searching for lawmakers.
Trump failed to immediately send stays to the Capitol as the siege unfolded. Instead, he watched the chaos on TV, according to The Washington Post.
Lawmakers are pushing for a comprehensive search into the Capitol riot. On Thursday, House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., asked FBI Director Christopher Wray to look into the part that social media site Parler played in the attack.
Maloney asked the agency to examine Parler as “a future facilitator of planning and incitement” and as a source of evidence related to the attacks.
Parler went offline after Google and Apple booted it from their app stocks, and Amazon Web Services shut off the cloud service that supported its website.