Donald Trump announced Sunday that he had hired two new lawyers to head his defense team for his historic second impeachment trial, a day after it was revealed that the former US president had parted ways with an earlier set of attorneys.

Trump said in a statement that “highly respected trial lawyers” David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor would lead his legal efforts, AFP reported.

It had come as a bit of shock when the media on Saturday reported several South Carolina lawyers who were set to represent him had left his team, a little more than a week shy of his trial before the US Senate.

Trump, the first president in American history to be impeached twice, is set to stand trial on a charge that he incited his supporters to breach Congress on January 6 as lawmakers met to certify President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

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Castor has focused on criminal law throughout his career, while Schoen specializes in “civil rights litigation in Alabama and federal criminal defense work, including white-collar and other complex cases, in New York. 

Meanwhile, Schoen had already been working with the defense team, and both he and Castor “agree that this impeachment is unconstitutional” because he is no longer in office, the statement said, AFP reported.

Legal scholars, however, say there is no bar to an impeachment trial despite Trump having left the White House.

“The Democrats’ efforts to impeach a president who has already left office is totally unconstitutional and so bad for our country,” Trump adviser Jason Miller has said, Reuters reported.

CNN had cited unnamed sources as saying that five lawyers — including two who were thought to be leading the team — had parted ways with the Republican billionaire after disagreeing over his legal strategy.

Trump had wanted the lawyers to continue his baseless claims of mass election fraud rather than focus on the legality of convicting a president after he has left office, CNN said, adding that he was “not receptive” to the discussion.

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The former president has reportedly been struggling to form a defense ahead of his historic trial, facing new hurdles with just days to go.

The trial — in which Trump faces a charge of “incitement of insurrection” — is to begin on February 9.

But with just five Republicans joining all 50 Democrats this week in agreeing that the trial should go forward, it appears unlikely that 17 Republicans would vote against Trump, the minimum number needed to reach the two-thirds threshold for conviction.