Trump's impeachment defence attorneys leave team a week before Senate trial

Five of former President Donald Trump's impeachment defence attorneys have stepped asidelittle more than a week before his trial amid a disagreement over his legal strategy.

Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, both South Carolina lawyers, have left the defence team in what one person described as a ''mutual decision''that reflected a difference of opinion on the direction of the case.The change injects fresh uncertainty into the makeup and strategy of his defence team.

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Trump is set to stand trial on the week of February8 on a charge that he incited the riot inside the USCapitol. Republicans and Trump aides have made clear that they intend to make a simple argument: The trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden urged his fellow members of the Democratic Party in the Senate to keep former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the upper chamber short and not to let it "derail the agenda".

Biden administration officials and allies close to the White House say the president will distance himself from Trump's trial as it begins in the second week of February.

There is a debate among scholars over whether the Senate can hold a trial forTrumpnow that he has left office. Many experts have said "lateimpeachment" is constitutional, arguing that presidents who engage in misconduct late in their terms should not be immune from the very process set out in the Constitution for holding them accountable.

The Constitution makes clear thatimpeachmentproceedings can result in disqualification from holding office in the future, so there is still an active issue for the Senate to resolve, those scholars have said.

Trumpis the only president to have been impeached by the House of Representatives twice and the first to face a trial after leaving power, with the possibility of being disqualified from future public office if convicted by two-thirds of the Senate.

The House approved a single article ofimpeachment- the equivalent of an indictment in a criminal trial - on January13, accusing him of inciting an insurrection with an incendiary speech to supporters before they stormed the Capitol. A police officer and four others died in the melee.

But reaching the two-thirds threshold required for conviction will be a steep climb.Trumpremains a powerful force among Republicans and his supporters have vowed to mount election challenges to lawmakers in the party who support the conviction.

Some Republicans have criticisedTrump's false claims of voting fraud and his failed efforts to overturn Biden's Novmeber3 election victory. But no Senate Republicans have said definitively that they plan to vote to convict him.

Although the Constitution calls on the chief justice to preside over presidentialimpeachmenttrials, a senator presides when the impeached is not the current president, a Senate source said. First elected to the chamber in 1974, Leahy is the most senior Democrat in the chamber and holds the title of Senate president pro tempore.

The nine House Democrats who will serve as prosecutors set the trial in motion on Monday by delivering the article ofimpeachmentto the Senate.