Schoen says Trump team will be ‘very well prepared’ after criticism

Former President Trump’s defense lawyer David Schoen Tuesday defended his team’s performance during the start of the Senate impeachment trial that was criticized by even some Republican senators.

Schoen, speaking with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, said that Bruce Castor, Trump’s other attorney, hadn’t planned to start his argument Tuesday and that he and his law firm “seem to be very capable people.”

“So, I’m sure they will be very well-prepared in the future and do a great job in the case,” Schoen said.

The defense comes after Castor’s performance was widely panned after he went on a meandering argument that included the beginning of democracies, name-checking individual senators and only briefly mentioning the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill, the center of the impeachment trial. 

“Anyone who listened to President Trump’s legal team saw they were unfocused, they attempted to avoid the issue and they talked about everything but the issue at hand,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) after the start of the trial. 

“I thought the president’s lawyer, the first lawyer, just rambled on and on and on and didn’t really address the constitutional argument,” added Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). 

Hannity told Schoen that he’d gotten calls from conservatives during the proceedings telling him, “Whoa, we need someone harder-hitting here.” 

“There’s a lot to say, and I know they feel very strongly about fighting against what they are seeing,” Schoen responded.