Trial ahead, Trump turns to ethics lawyer for his defense

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Butch Bowers is used to defending public officials in ethics cases. But he’s never faced anything quite like this.

It’s up to Bowers, a South Carolina elections and ethics lawyer, to rise and defend Donald Trump as the Senate soon plunges into an impeachment trial unlike any other, centered on accusations that the former president incited the mob that rampaged through the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. For Trump, the first president twice impeached, the stakes are enormous: If convicted, he could be barred from holding public office again, ending any hopes of mounting another White House bid in 2024.

Trump turned to Bowers, a familiar figure in Republican legal circles, after other legal allies passed on the case. That’s a notable departure from his first impeachment trial in 2020, when he had a stable of prominent attorneys — including Alan Dershowitz, Jay Sekulow, who represented him in the Russia investigation, and Kenneth Starr — standing in his corner.

The first impeachment trial turned on charges that Trump improperly solicited Ukraine’s help for his reelection campaign. The Senate acquitted him of those charges. The new trial could hinge on broader issues of law, including “whether the Constitution even allows a post-impeachment action in the Senate,” said Sekulow, who is not participating in Trump’s legal defense.

Sekulow said he did not expect Bowers, who has years of experience representing elected officials and political candidates — including former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford against a failed impeachment effort that morphed into an ethics probe — to be hindered by having never defended a current or former president in a Senate trial.