Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) would give it all up for you, Mr. Former President Sir!
During an interview on ex-senior White House adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast on Wednesday, Gaetz lamented how President Donald Trump “so far has gotten a low-energy defense” ahead of his second Senate impeachment trial next week.
The Republican lawmaker told Bannon he would “absolutely” resign from Congress to fight for Trump on the Senate floor if the former president asked him to.
“I would leave my House seat. I would leave my home,” Gaetz declared. “I would do anything I had to do to ensure that the greatest president in my lifetime, one of the greatest presidents our country’s ever had, maybe the greatest president our country has ever had, got a full-throated defense that wasn’t crouched down, that wasn’t in fear of losing some moderate Republican senator, but that was worthy of the fight he gave to the great people of this country for four years.”
Trump’s efforts to put together a solid defense strategy has been mired in chaos. First the ex-president struggled to find lawyers who were willing to represent him, then the lawyers he did manage to recruit bowed out just over a week before the trial was set to begin. The attorneys reportedly left when Trump kept insisting that they use his falsehoods about election fraud as a defense-and when he reportedly refused to pay them what they’d asked for.
The former president was forced to assemble a new legal team that included the lawyer who represented one of his top allies, Roger Stone, and a former district attorney who had declined to prosecute now-convicted rapist Bill Cosby in 2005.
On Tuesday, the two lawyers issued their response to House’s impeachment article that charged Trump with “incitement of insurrection” for encouraging an angry mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol. The attorneys argued that the impeachment was unconstitutional, infringed on Trump’s free speech rights, and was motivated by “political hatred.”
