One of Trump’s attorneys believes Epstein was
murdered, the other didn't prosecute Cosby
David Schoen also represented ‘all sorts of reputed
mobsters’ while Bruce Castor sued Cosby accuser for defamation
Martin
Pengelly
@MartinPengelly
Mon 1 Feb
2021 14.20 GMT
One of two
attorneys named to defend Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial
represented Roger Stone, believes Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself and
numbers among his clients “all sorts of reputed mobster figures”, including “a
guy the government claimed was the biggest mafioso in the world”.
Trump’s
trial starts next week. He is due to respond to the charge on Tuesday. At the
weekend his first team of lawyers quit, reportedly because he insisted his
defence against a charge of inciting the deadly US Capitol attack on 6 January
should be based on the lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of
electoral fraud.
Given that
45 of 50 Republican senators voted against even holding a trial, Trump seems
likely to escape conviction. But the Ohio senator Rob Portman told CNN on
Sunday it would not help Trump “if the argument is not going to be made on
issues like constitutionality”.
The same
day, Trump announced the appointment of Bruce Castor, from Pennsylvania, and
David Schoen, of Georgia.
Castor is a
former district attorney known for his decision not to prosecute Cosby in 2005
after Andrea Constand accused the comedian of sexual assault. In 2017, Castor
sued Constand for defamation, claiming she destroyed his political career.
Cosby was convicted and sentenced the following year.
Last
September, Schoen told the Atlanta Jewish Times: “I represented all sorts of
reputed mobster figures: alleged head of Russian mafia in this country, Israeli
mafia and two Italian bosses, as well a guy the government claimed was the
biggest mafioso in the world.”
He also
discussed his work on police misconduct, but opposition to the movement to
“defund the police”, and the Stone case. The confessed political dirty
trickster was convicted of lying to Congress in the Russia investigation but
Trump pardoned him in December. Schoen called Stone “very bright, full of
personality and flair” and the case against him “very unfair and politicised”.
Schoen said
he trained as an actor, “at the Actors Studio and Herbert Berghof Studio”,
which he said helped when he appeared in a Discovery Channel documentary about
Epstein, a well-connected convicted sex trafficker who killed himself in
custody in New York in 2019.
Schoen said
promotional work included interviews with “Fox, Good Day New York, and [the]
Daily Mail” but said he had “had enough. Takes too much time away from legal
work. Three different agents have called.”
Asked for a
“last word on Jeffrey Epstein”, Schoen said: “I still think he was murdered.”
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