Welcome to Courtside, everyone, a discussion of legal issues and ideally legal issues that don't involve Donald J. Trump.

It's a beautiful snowy day here in Washington. I got to spend some of it shoveling.

And I was psyched to do a fully non-Trump episode and spent a bunch of yesterday planning it out. I was excited to tell you

all about Fred Korematsu Day and about Marjorie Taylor Green. But then Trump came back in.

As Wycliffe says, every time I keep pulling out, y'all keep pulling me back in. Yes, last

night it was revealed that all five of Donald Trump's lawyers on impeachment quit.

His trial is next week.

So you know the beginning of the heist movie where they introduce all the characters and their special skills?

Well, Donald Trump's legal team yesterday looked a bit like that, except instead of characters,

they just are all cartoons,

and instead of special skills, there are, I guess, disbarment proceedings. So all five of his

lawyers on impeachment, Butch Bowers, Deborah Barbier, Josh Howard, Johnny Gasser, and Greg Harris

have all left his legal team. So he now has two new lawyers, one of whom is Bruce Castor.

And Bruce Castor was just revealed a few moments ago, literally as I was recording this.

He joined a law firm in December, and that law firm happened to sue Donald Trump.

And here's an excerpt from the lawsuit

filed by Mr. Castor's law firm. Quote, these actions arise in an environment who are subject

to repeated claims by President Donald J. Trump that voting by mail is ripe with fraud, despite

having no evidence in support of these claims, and lawsuits filed by Trump campaign to stop mail-in voting in states such as Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Nonetheless, these five lawyers yesterday evidently quit because Trump wants to argue in his defense to impeachment that the election was stolen.

That's, of course, not a defense of his

conduct. That's an admission of his guilt. He's just saying the violence was justified. And it's also

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