Trump loses his impeachment team amid unfaltering loyalty from the

On Jan 31, 2021

But his party has stuck with him. After a brief flirtation with reason and sound judgment in the weeks following the January 6 siege at the Capitol, the Republican Party has decided to honor their deep and often blind allegiance to Trump, choosing to overlook his role in inciting the deadly insurrection rather than pay the price of crossing him and his base next year at the ballot box.

The collapse of Trump’s legal team amid a disagreement over legal strategy, which CNN first reported Saturday night, stood in stark contrast to the slow crawl of Republican elected leaders back into the former President’s corner as the anger lawmakers feel about the insurrection fades and his potential power to help or destroy them in the 2022 elections becomes paramount.

While the Republican Party continues to bend to Trump’s whims, forgive his dangerous behavior, and quiver in the face of his election threats, the judiciary and the legal profession are adhering to a higher ethical standard — and have largely refused to tolerate his efforts to ramrod the nation’s democratic institutions and founding principles throughout his baseless election charade — making the GOP’s loyalty to Trump even more appalling.

A person familiar with the departures of the five attorneys — Butch Bowers, Deborah Barbier, Josh Howard, Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris — told CNN that Trump wanted the attorneys to center his defense on the notion that there was mass election fraud in November and that the election was stolen from him, instead of questioning the legality of convicting a president after he’s left office. Trump was not receptive to the discussions about how they should proceed, according to CNN’s Gloria Borger, Kaitlan Collins, Jeff Zeleny and Ashley Semler.

And yet, the GOP has been very much here for the former President, demonstrating how much it has been irrevocably changed by Trump’s corrosive influence last week when members of the party stood by mostly silently and refused to reprimand Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who should have ended the week in disgrace after CNN’s KFile exposed that she previously indicated support for executing prominent Democrats.

Instead, like Trump, the freshman Republican has doubled down and escaped largely unscathed, avoiding any punishment from GOP leaders as she falsely claims to be the victim of a “blood thirsty media.” On Saturday, she emerged defiant on Twitter after claiming to have had a “great call” with Trump, continuing to spout falsehoods about the presidential election and failing to show a shred of remorse for her endorsement of violent threats against lawmakers or offensive and baseless theories about the Parkland shooting. While her conduct gets a pass from GOP leaders, some Republican state parties and local leaders are rushing to condemn the GOP lawmakers who dared to vote for the impeachment of the former President.

The case of both Trump — who is expected to be acquitted in the Senate — and Greene is the latest…