Former President Donald Trump on Sunday announced his new legal team for his upcoming Senate impeachment trial, featuring attorney Bruce Castor.
Castor joined Trump’s team after South Carolina attorneys Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier cut ties with Trump over the weekend.
“I consider it a privilege to represent the 45th President,” Castor said in a statement. “The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history. It is strong and resilient. A document written for the ages, and it will triumph over partisanship yet again, and always.”
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Castor is best known for his years as a prosecutor in Pennsylvania. From 2000 to 2008 he was the district attorney of Montgomery County, near Philadelphia.
Former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor heads back into courtroom A after a break in a pretrail hearing for entertainer Bill Cosby and his sexual assault case Feb. 2, 2016, in Norristown, Pa. (Clem Murray – Pool/Getty Images)
Castor drew attention during his time as DA when in 2005 he made the call not to prosecute Bill Cosby for alleged sex crimes. That came back to haunt him when he launched a failed bid to reclaim the DA position in 2015.
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Castor went on to work in private practice, which included criminal defense. That work caused a stir in Pennsylvania when he was allowed to continue that work after being tapped to be the state’s solicitor general and top deputy to then-Attorney General Kathleen Kane in 2016. This went against the usual practice of prosecutors with the attorney general’s office not being permitted to work in private practice, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
A spokesperson for Kane said at the time that “getting someone with the experience and expertise Mr. Castor brings . . . is worthy of the exception.”
Castor went on to briefly serve as acting attorney general after Kane was convicted after facing charges of leaking protected investigative information to smear a rival and lying to a grand jury about it.
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Castor is joined on Trump’s defense team by attorney David Schoen. The trial is set to begin the week of Feb. 8.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
