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.
-
Grok in the crosshairs as EU launches deepfake porn probeIN THE SPOTLIGHT The European Union has officially begun investigating Elon Musk’s proprietary AI, as regulators zero in on Grok’s porn problem and its impact continent-wide
-
‘But being a “hot” country does not make you a good country’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Why have homicide rates reportedly plummeted in the last year?Today’s Big Question There could be more to the story than politics
-
Israel retrieves final hostage’s body from GazaSpeed Read The 24-year-old police officer was killed during the initial Hamas attack
-
China’s Xi targets top general in growing purgeSpeed Read Zhang Youxia is being investigated over ‘grave violations’ of the law
-
Panama and Canada are negotiating over a crucial copper mineIn the Spotlight Panama is set to make a final decision on the mine this summer
-
Why Greenland’s natural resources are nearly impossible to mineThe Explainer The country’s natural landscape makes the task extremely difficult
-
Iran cuts internet as protests escalateSpeed Reada Government buildings across the country have been set on fire
-
US nabs ‘shadow’ tanker claimed by RussiaSpeed Read The ship was one of two vessels seized by the US military
-
Maduro pleads not guilty in first US court hearingSpeed Read Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores pleaded not guilty to cocaine trafficking and narco-terrorism conspiracy
-
Iran’s government rocked by protestsSpeed Read The death toll from protests sparked by the collapse of Iran’s currency has reached at least 19
