GOP senators baffled by meandering impeachment lawyer Castor

Even Republican senators who voted against proceeding with the impeachment trial against former President Donald Trump were baffled by the opening argument from impeachment defense lawyer Bruce Castor.

“I thought I knew where I was going, and I really didn’t know where he was going,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday about Castor’s performance.

“It took a long time to get to where I think the meat of the question is,” Graham said. “The defense guys were accusing every Democrat of just hating Trump, and I’m not so sure either one of them are going to win the day.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, when asked about Castor, had a long pause before saying: “I don’t think the lawyers did the most effective job.”

Castor, former solicitor general of Pennsylvania, gave a long, meandering statement that included little to support Republican arguments that the impeachment trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office and, therefore, cannot be removed from office.

Six Republican senators on Tuesday joined Democrats in voting that it is constitutional to proceed with the impeachment trial. That included the five senators who previously voted with Democrats to proceed with the trial despite Republican objections to constitutionality — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania — plus a surprise addition: Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

Cassidy said it was Castor’s strange argument that pushed him to vote on Tuesday in favor of proceeding with the trial.

“President Trump’s team was disorganized, they did everything they could but to talk about the question at hand. And when they talked about it, they kind of glided over it, almost as if they were embarrassed of their arguments,” Cassidy told the press pool.

“If you listen to it, it speaks for itself. It was disorganized, random, they talked about many things, but they didn’t talk about the issue at hand. And so, if I’m an impartial juror, and I’m trying to make a decision based upon the facts as presented on this issue, then the House managers did a much better job,” Cassidy said.

One bit of Castor’s speech included a confusing, long reference to Sasse, a critic of Trump who is considered one of the few Republicans who could vote to convict Trump on the “incitement of insurrection” impeachment article, and judges in Nebraska. Another portion included an exploration of why people use the phrase “my senator.”

“You know it’s funny — this is an aside, but it’s funny — you ever notice how when you’re talking, or you hear others talking about you when you’re home in your state, they — they will say ‘I talked to my senator’ or ‘I talked to somebody on the staff of ‘my senator,’” Castor said. “It’s always ‘my senator.’ Why is it that we say ‘my senator’? We say that because the people you represent are proud of their senators.”

His reference to his own Pennsylvania senators, Toomey and Democrat Bob Casey, drew criticism from Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst.

Castor “spent too much time there visiting about maybe Pat Toomey and Casey,” Ernst said. “But I do think that Schoen did a very nice job bringing it all home.”

Murkowski expressed a similar sentiment. “I was really stunned at the first attorney who presented for former President Trump,” she said. “I couldn’t figure out where he was going, spent 45 minutes going somewhere, but I don’t think he helped with us better understanding where he was coming from on the constitutionality.”

In contrast to Trump’s repeated argument that the election was “stolen,” Castor stated that “the American people just spoke, and they just changed administrations” and that Americans are “smart enough to pick a new administration if they don’t like the old one,” flying in the face of Trump’s repeated argument that the election was “stolen.”

Castor also said that opening arguments from impeachment managers like Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin caused him to reevaluate his presentation.

“I’ll be quite frank with you. We changed what we were going to do on account that we thought that the House managers’ presentation was well done,” Castor said. “We have counterarguments to everything that they raised, and you will hear them later on in the case.”

Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, who frequently argues on television that the trial is unconstitutional and defended Trump during his first impeachment, also chimed in on Castor’s strange performance in a Newsmax interview during the trial: “I have no idea what he is doing.“

Another Trump lawyer, David Schoen, presented more complete arguments about the constitutionality of convicting a former president.

Castor told reporters Tuesday evening that he thought his team did a “good job” and that he does not expect any more changes to arguments.