Sen. Coons: Trump's impeachment defense is 'the Four Seasons Landscaping of the legal profession'
The messiness of former President Donald Trump's impeachment lawyer Bruce Castor reminds Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) of an earlier fiasco involving a different Trump attorney.
During a Tuesday evening interview with MSNBC host Joy Reid, Coons said he didn't think Castor or his colleague David Schoen prepared at all for their opening arguments. "I've got to tell you, listening to those two, this was the Four Seasons Landscaping of the legal profession," Coons said. "This was some of the weakest argumentation I've ever heard."
This was a call back to the Nov. 7 press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia. During this Rudy Giuliani production, the Trump team discussed its legal challenges to Pennsylvania's ballot-counting process. It was a widely panned event, with most people believing Giuliani messed up and meant to hold the press conference at the Four Seasons luxury hotel, not at a landscaping company down the road from a crematorium and a sex shop.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Jokes aside, Coons said Castor went "on and on without any clear focus or purpose," adding that the "argumentation [was] not well founded, not well thought out, and not very compelling." In contrast, he found the House managers gave a "focused, concrete, compelling argument, and they had the citations from over 150 constitutional law professors and scholars, from conservative to progressive, to back them up."
After hearing from both sides, Coons said he "questions how anyone could have voted today that this was an unconstitutional proceeding." He also made it clear he believes that Trump must be impeached because "if we fail to hold him accountable this time," it will "move forward this idea that a president is unconstrained by the limits of the Constitution."
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
-
How the online world relies on AWS cloud serversThe Explainer Chaos caused by Monday’s online outage shows that ‘when AWS sneezes, half the internet catches the flu’
-
Leonard and Hungry Paul: ‘beautiful, heartfelt’ televisionThe Week Recommends Julia Roberts narrates this ‘charming’ and ‘unexpectedly profound’ adaptation of Rónán Hession’s novel
-
Inside The Peninsula, London’s first billion-pound hotelThe Week Recommends As the capital’s super-luxury hotel scene continues to expand, the respected brand is still setting the standard
-
Bolivia elects centrist over far-right presidential rivalSpeed Read Relative political unknown Rodrigo Paz, a centrist senator, was elected president
-
Madagascar president in hiding, refuses to resignSpeed Read Andry Rajoelina fled the country amid Gen Z protests and unrest
-
Sanae Takaichi: Japan’s Iron Lady set to be the country’s first woman prime ministerIn the Spotlight Takaichi is a member of Japan’s conservative, nationalist Liberal Democratic Party
-
Israel, Hamas agree to first step of Trump peace planSpeed Read Israel’s military pulls back in Gaza amid prisoner exchange
-
Israel intercepts 2nd Gaza aid flotilla in a weekSpeed Read The Israeli military intercepted a flotilla of nine boats with 145 activists aboard along with medical and food aid
-
Japan poised to get first woman prime ministerSpeed Read The ruling Liberal Democratic Party elected former Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi
-
Israel and Hamas meet on hostages, Trump’s planSpeed Read Hamas accepted the general terms of Trump’s 20-point plan, including the release of all remaining hostages
-
US tipped to help Kyiv strike Russian energy sitesSpeed Read Trump has approved providing Ukraine with intelligence for missile strikes on Russian energy infrastructure
