But the process around him was so necessarily irregular that no process people wanted in. Or he, the antithesis of process, had exhausted all of them. To a man, all the lawyers in his first impeachment trial begged off—no Jay Sekulow, no Pat Cipollone, no Alan Dershowitz, no Ken Starr, no Pam Bondi, no Patrick Philbin, no Jane Raskin, no Robert Ray, no Eric Herschmann (other than to manage from afar—and unseen). Nobody wanted to be associated with Donald Trump. Sekulow’s absence particularly angered the former president. “I’ve given him so much fucking money, and now he’s too busy? That’s bullshit!” Conflicts, prior commitments, COVID—virtually every lawyer associated with the Trump White House or with Trump himself was unavailable, save Rudy. And Rudy, if miraculously his representation had failed to kill Trump before, would surely now be the nail in the former president’s coffin. So, not if he were the last lawyer on earth.

They would, Kushner was assuring Senate Republicans, put together a team of some of the country’s top constitutional scholars. But not a single one materialized.

Meadows remembered that Steve Castor, the House minority counsel during the first impeachment, had a brother who was a former prosecutor. In fact, not a brother, it turned out; a cousin—in Philly. The cousin, Bruce Castor, a former prosecutor, had no particular attributes that would have recommended him as a candidate for defending a president (former president) in an impeachment trial—perhaps most notably, he was the prosecutor who decided not to prosecute Bill Cosby—but he was willing (although, not willing if Rudy was going to be involved). Little more than a month before Bruce Castor was contacted to defend the president, he had joined a local Philadelphia firm that specialized in personal injury cases—also not propitious, but at least it was some sort of law firm.

Meanwhile, Roger Stone, often almost as much of a millstone around the neck and threat to the president as Giuliani—aides tried assiduously to keep him from talking to the president—knew somebody. David Schoen was a solo practitioner in Montgomery, Alabama, operating without a secretary or assistant. But Stone swore by him. So, out of the blue, Trump called up Schoen. They chatted for forty-five minutes, and Trump hired him: “You’re going to be my guy. You’ll be in charge.”

But Lindsey Graham had an idea, too.