Stumbles, Clashes and Egos: Behind the Scenes With Trump’s Legal Team

Mr. Castor then told Mr. Schoen that he wanted to address the jurors.

“I admired his courage for jumping right in,” Mr. Schoen said. “Unfortunately, he got panned by the media pretty soundly and a number of people thought perhaps the agenda should be reconsidered.”

Mr. van der Veen said in an interview that Mr. Castor had stepped up to speak because he believed it would be a way to reduce the emotion in the room.

But Mr. Trump became enraged by Mr. Castor’s meandering, low-energy performance. The former president called Mr. Clark, among others, to vent that afternoon.

“Bruce doesn’t go on TV again,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the televised presentations from the floor of the Senate. Mr. Trump also wanted Mr. Clark to join the legal team and present arguments in the chamber. Other advisers told the former president that shaking up the defense in the middle of the trial was a bad idea.

But Mr. Clark told Mr. van der Veen that he needed to inform Mr. Castor that he would not present anymore.

But on Wednesday afternoon, when Mr. Clark arrived at the Trump International Hotel and joined the group in the conference room of a private suite on the first floor called the “townhouse,” it was clear that Mr. van der Veen had not relayed the message.

So Mr. Clark did it, and Mr. Castor blew up.

Mr. Castor did not respond to an email seeking comment. But both Mr. van der Veen and Mr. Schoen said they believed that Mr. Castor was unfairly pilloried.

What happened next is the subject of debate.

Two people involved in the effort said that Mr. Clark, as well as Alex Cannon, another lawyer who had worked on the Trump campaign and for the Trump Organization, took over writing the scripts that the lawyers would use to present and told them not to deviate from them. Jason Miller, a political adviser to Mr. Trump, looked over the completed scripts, those people said. And Ory Rinat, a former White House aide, helped develop the visual presentations.

Both Mr. Schoen and Mr. van der Veen denied that the Trump aides scripted out the presentations.

“I’m not taking credit for anybody else’s work and they shouldn’t take it for mine, either,” Mr. van der Veen said.

On Thursday night, there was another snag: Mr. Schoen had a dispute with Mr. Miller over which video clips were going to be played when. He briefly quit, but then said he would not present the next day and would sit at the table in the Senate with the other lawyers. Mr. Trump’s advisers scrambled to figure out how to have Mr. Castor, whom the client did not want to see, take over a larger portion of the presentation on Friday.

Mr. Trump reached out to Mr. Schoen directly, and after they spoke, Mr. Schoen said he would give his presentation after all. While the former president had developed a rapport with Mr. Schoen, he also praised Mr. van der Veen’s performance on Friday to other members of the team.

Mr. Schoen, whose mother had died a few weeks earlier of the coronavirus and who blew a kiss toward the sky after his final presentation, said that Mr. Trump was far from a micromanager.

“He literally called me a few times a day some days just to tell me how much he appreciated me and had confidence in me and that I should have more confidence in myself,” said Mr. Schoen, who did not participate in the Senate proceedings on Saturday because of the Jewish Sabbath.

But Mr. Schoen added that he should have kept Mr. Trump more in the loop about who was going to speak at the trial.

“I think I let him down,” he said.