Former Acting PA AG is one of 2 attorneys appointed to Trump’s impeachment defense team

WASHINGTON Donald Trump announced on Sunday that a former county attorney and a criminal defense attorney with civil rights background would lead his impeachment defense team, a day after it was revealed that the former president had separated from a previous group of lawyers.

Trump’s two representatives will be defense attorney David Schoen, a frequent legal commentator on television, and Bruce Castor, a former Pennsylvania prosecutor who has been criticized for his decision not to indict actor Bill Cosby in a sex crimes case.

Both attorneys released statements through Trumps’ office saying they were honored to take the job.

The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history. It is strong and resilient. A document written for the ages, and it will triumph over partisanship once again and always, said Castor, who served as a Montgomery County district attorney, outside of Philadelphia, from 2000 to 2008.

Sunday’s announcement was intended to promote a sense of stability around Trump’s defense team as his impeachment trial approaches. Several South Carolina lawyers were scheduled to represent him at the trial, which begins the week of February 8.

Trump, the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice, is set to stand trial in the Senate for instigating his supporters to storm Congress on Jan.6 as lawmakers meet to certify electoral victory by Joe Bidens.

Republicans and Trump aides have made it clear that they intend to make a simple argument at trial: The Trumps trial is unconstitutional because he is no longer in office.

Democrats’ efforts to remove a president who has already left office are totally unconstitutional and so bad for our country, said Trump adviser Jason Miller.

• RELATED: Everyone hates Bruce Castor, and the acting GA doesn’t care

Many legal scholars say there is no obstacle to an impeachment trial despite Trump’s departure from the White House. One argument is that state constitutions prior to the US Constitution allowed for impeachment after officials left. Nor did the Constitutions draftsmen specifically prohibit the practice.

Castor, a Republican who was the elected district attorney for Pennsylvanias, the third most populous county, decided not to indict Cosby in an alleged sexual encounter in 2004. He ran for the post again in 2015, and his judgment in the Cosby case was a key issue used against him by the Democrat who defeated him.

Castor said he personally believed Cosby should have been arrested, but the evidence was not strong enough to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

In 2004, Castor applied for the post of attorney general without success. In 2016, he became the senior lieutenant of besieged State Attorney General Kathleen Kane, a Democrat, as she faced charges of leaking protected investigative information to smear a rival and lie to a big jury about it. She was sentenced, leaving Castor as interim state attorney general for a few days.

Schoen met with financier Jeffrey Epstein about joining his defense team on sex trafficking charges just days before Epstein committed suicide in a New York prison. In an interview with the Atlanta Jewish Times last year, Schoen said he was approached by Trump associate Roger Stone before the Stones’ trial and was later held back to process his appeal. Trump commuted Stones’ sentence and then pardoned him.

Neither Schoen nor Castor immediately returned phone messages asking for comment on Sunday evening.

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Eric Tucker and Jill Colvin of The Associated Press wrote this story. PA editors Marc Levy in Harrisburg and Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.