Dan Abrams: Trump Attorneys Made ‘Meandering’ Case, Mixed ‘Serious Legal Arguments with Legal Gobbledegook’

Mediaite founder and ABC chief legal analyst Dan Abrams suggested Tuesday that former President Donald Trump had reason to be dissatisfied with his legal team’s performance on the first day of his Senate impeachment trial.

“The president can’t be happy, in my view, with Bruce Castor’s presentation,” Abrams said, referencing one of the president’s attorneys. “Not just because it was meandering and a bit of a disaster as a presentation, but because he said again and again that Donald Trump was removed by the voters, that the people picked a new administration. That belies everything Donald Trump has been saying and what got him into this mess in the first place. It’s not just that they’re not arguing voter fraud. They’re clearly arguing that the election was valid and it’s over.”

He subsequently took aim at David Schoen, the second attorney who presented on Trump’s behalf.

“With regard to Schoen, it was a mixture of what I think were some serious legal arguments with legal gobbledegook,” Abrams said. “The serious arguments are with regard to whether a former president can be and should be tried in an impeachment. I think there was some real arguments made about the text of the impeachment clause, et cetera, which we’re going to hear again and again. But then there were the arguments about due process and a Bill of Attainder and presumption of innocence, none of which is relevant to what we’re talking about here. When you’re talking about the criminal law, you’re talking about when they have the power of the government to take away someone’s freedom, and so there are extra protections in place.

“Due process … does it apply in an impeachment proceeding?” he added. “Yes, in the sense that he should get a trial by the Senate. A Bill of Attainder is a legislative bill where you target someone and you try to convict them, in essence, without having a trial. It’s not relevant in this context at all.”

Critics widely panned the Trump legal team’s Tuesday performance. Alan Dershowitz, who represented the former president during his first impeachment trial in 2020, told Newsmax earlier in the afternoon that he had “no idea” how to explain their approach.

Watch above via ABC News.