Trump lawyer Bruce Castor admits last-minute strategy change in ‘meandering’ opening remarks

Lead counsel undermines former president's false election fraud claims by admitting he was 'removed from office by the voters'

Donald Trump's lead impeachment counsel Bruce Castor admitted the former president's legal team revised its opening strategy following damning video evidence and emotional and constitutional appeals from House prosecutors.

Mr Castor opened his remarks by praising US Senators before a "meandering" defense, which he said was initially intended to address impeachment jurisdiction, but he appeared to be caught off guard by a powerful series of remarks from Democratic impeachment managers.

"I'll be quite frank with you, we changed what we were going to do on account that we thought the House managers' presentation was well done," Mr Castor said.

His widely derided ("rambling, incoherent and inaccurate") opening statement concluded with an admission that the former president “was removed from office by the voters”.

Read more: Follow live updates from Trump's second impeachment trial

"The American people just spoke, and they just changed administrations,” he said, appearing to undermine Mr Trump's ongoing and baseless argument that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and his supporters. His attorneys have sought to argue that convicting an impeached president who is no longer in office is unconstitutional.

"The people are smart enough to pick a new administration if they don’t like the old one,” Mr Castor said. "And they just did."

Moments later, attorney David Schoen accused Democrats of relying on a "tool to disenfranchise” voters who supported the former president by holding a trial following his impeachment in the House of Representatives for incitement of an insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January – fuelled by false claims of election fraud.

The former president's legal team has been accused of seeking to disfranchise millions of voters by challenging results in predominantly Black counties in battleground states.

Mr Schoen also mocked Democrats for screening a 10-minute "movie" compiling harrowing footage from the attacks, interspersed with Mr Trump's comments at a rally that day, despite the defence team screening their own video footage, set to dramatic music, that compiled clips of Democratic lawmakers calling for the former president's impeachment over the last few years.