Washington-SANA
Five lawyers withdrew from the defense team of former US President Donald Trump a week before the start of his trial, refusing to adopt Trump's allegations of "election fraud" as the basis of the legal defense strategy.
CNN quoted informed sources as saying that Butch Bowers and Deborah Barberry, who were expected to be the main attorneys in Trump's trial, left the former US president's team at a time when he was actively seeking to find lawyers willing to represent him in the impeachment case.
The sources pointed out that attorney Joshua Howard from North Carolina and attorneys Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris from South Carolina withdrew from the case as well.
The decision confuses Trump's defense team, which is preparing for the trial that begins on February 8th, to consider the accountability article approved by the House of Representatives, as Trump finds himself in this way without legal representation.
According to the sources, Trump wanted the lawyers' team to argue that "there was massive fraud in the elections and that it was stolen from him instead of focusing on the legality of the conviction of a president after he left office while Trump was not receptive to discussions about how to proceed in this regard."
Most of the members of the US House of Representatives voted on January 13, including ten Republican lawmakers, in favor of passing legislation providing for Trump to be held accountable for incitement to rebellion following the storming of Congress by some of his supporters on the sixth of this month in a wave of unrest that killed 5 People.
