It was Donald Trump's second impeachment, but this time around, fewer lawyers were willing to work with him. One who was, David Schoen, had a meltdown moments before the legal team was about to begin the trial.
Michael Wolff's new book Landslide walks through the strange factoids of the legal team that made up Trump's defense. First, there was Adam. No one knew who Adam was, but the team was waylayed leaving for the Capitol in their caravan because Adam was taking a law school quiz on Zoom.
"We've gone through all the lawyers and are now down to law students," said a "Trump wag," according to Wolff.
But it was David Schoen who had the meltdown as they headed to trial.
"Schoen now had gone into a sullen, alarming funk—a strike of sorts, it suddenly seemed, only a day before the trial was to begin. Here was the stop-the-trial crisis: [Bruce] Castor had not provided a place for Schoen's college-age son, Simon, to sit on the Senate Floor. It was hard to know why someone would take on the defense of Donald J. Trump. Most lawyers—over and over again—had run from the opportunity.
"Where is Simon going to sit? There's no place for Simon. I was told I could have Simon with me," said Schoen. Wolff described that it was as if Schoen was "about to hyperventilate, as the McConnell aides stared in shock. In the cold orbit of Donald Trump, where only one man's feelings usually prevailed, this was a weird human meltdown, and no one knew what to do."
"'I was told I could have Simon,' Schoen repeated, refusing to move on.
Wolff described the room refusing to look up or look at each other, "confounded" by the idea that Trump was about to be defended by a lawyer who seemed about to cry. Schoen folded his arms and explained that others have assistance and he doesn't have anyone. Castor explained that there wasn't a lot of room, and it wasn't as if Simon was involved in the case.
"Dad, Dad, it's okay," Simon finally said, just moments before the trial began.
"Finally, moments before the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump looked about to collapse into absurdity, dysfunction, and tears, with each person in Room S-211—like all people who had found themselves in Trumpworld—wondering how they had arrived at this freaky place."
Schoen and Castor argued that Trump shouldn't have been impeached because he wasn't in office anymore. While the House had already voted to impeach, while he was in office, the trial was stalled by Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Republicans then decided that they shouldn't call witnesses and voted to let Trump go again.
