In nine days Donald Trump will go on trial in the U.S. Senate for "incitement of insurrection," but he ain't got no lawyers.
The five lawyers he did have (although an intent letter was never signed) have hit the road. Reports CNN: The two lead attorneys "are no longer on the team"; a third "has also left"; and a fourth and fifth "are no longer involved with the case, either."
Other outlets, such as the Washington Post, are reporting that it's "unclear" as to why the Gang of Five has taken flight. The NY Times says vaguely that Trump's insistence on arguing election fraud rather than the unconstitutionality of a post-presidency trial triggered the departures; that, plus Trump believes, in classic Trumpian fashion, that the case is so "simple" he could argue it himself — and thereby spare a defense bill, though he probably wouldn't pay it anyway.
CNN, however, states unequivocally that "Trump wanted the attorneys to argue there was mass election fraud and that the election was stolen from him rather than focus on the legality of convicting a president after he's left office." Somewhere, somehow, I should think, he'll find attorneys willing to do precisely that.
The ploy is an unambiguous sign of how seriously the former president is taking this trial. He just wants a circus in which dancing elephants with law licenses attach to each other's tail and perform, exclusively for Trump's political benefit, his election-fraud sideshow. Presiding judge Sen. Leahy shall then be compelled, I assume, to rule that Trump's strained "defense" is inadmissible.
This further raises the question: Is the trial even worth it? We'll have a presidential impeachment trial without a Chief Justice presiding; a concluding verdict that is, to put it mildly, foregone; a verdict that is also absurd in its acquittal; a "vindicating" verdict; a trial impinging on President Biden's urgent agenda to save lives and the economy; and a defendant, all along, who wishes to treat the trial as both a joke and a campaign rally.
I certainly understand the argument in support of a trial — its historic … necessity? But, borrowing from Nancy Pelosi's initial objection to any pre-Ukraine Trump impeachment — "He's just not worth it" — George Will suspects that Chief Justice John Roberts' decision to forego presiding over this impeachment trial suggests an identical judgment: He’s just not worth it.
And that's an argument of attitude and sentiment which is hard to overcome.