One of Trump’s lawyers has said he will not mention claims of election fraud during the upcoming Senate impeachment trial. Attorney Bruce Castor, while speaking to KYW Newsradio, said “There are plenty of questions about how the election was conducted throughout the country, but that’s for a different forum, and I don’t believe that’s important to litigate in the Senate trial because you don’t need it.”
On Tuesday, Castor and attorney David Schoen responded to House Democratic impeachment managers, stating the trial has no constitutional grounds because Trump is not in office. While not mentioning election fraud, Castor’s response did express Trump has the right to express his views under the First Amendment.
The topic of alleged election fraud has come back into the limelight after reports of Trump parting ways with his attorneys because they refused to speak about those allegations. Speaking to these reports, Castor said, “I don’t know where people got that notion that was some sort of litmus test to get to defend the president, because as you saw from the document I filed, which had to be approved by the president personally, there isn’t anything in there about the election being stolen.”
In the interview, Castor addressed the allegation that Trump incited a riot/insurrection saying, “The president deplores the violence at the Capitol, and those people should be punished, aggressively, as I would have done as if I was the DA and they did it at the Montgomery County courthouse. But just because somebody gave a speech and people got excited, it doesn’t mean it’s the speechmaker’s fault. It’s the people who got excited and did what they know is wrong.”
Currently, 17 Republican Senators have publically backed convicting Trump in an impeachment trial.
The Senate’s impeachment trial is set for 2/8/21.
