𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Donald Trump’s impeachment lawyer has offered his assessment on whether his former client could face a third impeachment. On Tuesday (November 3), the GOP experienced a substantial defeat as Democrats secured both the House of Representatives and the Senate, meaning they’ll hold Congress for the remainder of Trump’s presidential term.

Trump urged voters in recent weeks to “pretend I’m on the ballot” as he conducted a series of MAGA rallies axcross the country, in an attempt to personalise the campaign and consolidate support for his Republican candidates. As the tally increasingly appeared to benefit Democrats on Wednesday morning, the POTUS told Fox News they “did a good job”, while attributing the blame to GOP candidates for the setbacks.

It conveyed a remarkably measured tone for a president who now confronts the prospect of serious checks on his administration. Indeed, Democrats, holding both chambers, could even initiate investigations into Trump and his family.

They could also attempt to remove Trump from office via impeachment (an indignity he’s experienced twice previously). Speaking from the White House yesterday, Trump cautioned the party that a third investigation would “destroy” them because the US is “more successful now than at any time in its history”

But how likely is impeachment? We consulted trial lawyer Michael T. van der Veen, who represented Trump during his second impeachment trial in 2021.

He revealed to us exclusively ahead of the midterm results: “Well, I guess that depends on how it goes. I don’t know. You know the cries for voter fraud and all that, you know, it’s a war cry for sure, but I haven’t seen a lot of evidence of anything.

“For the losers who cry and complain, since they started throwing stones as a contest back in caveman times, it’s human nature that you’d be p***** off when you lose.

“You serve a tennis ball, and it goes into the net, what do you do? You look at your racket. Not a racket!”.

Trump has previously floated the prospect of a third term, despite having no constitutional means to pursue one. Michael believes this is simply a “distraction” – though even Trump appears to anticipate potential impeachment.

In August, he informed a gathering of supporters in South Carolina they would “lose everything” should Democrats triumph in the midterms, explicitly declaring he would probably face impeachment.

He stated: “I’m going to be impeached. They’re going to impeach me. They have no idea why.”

Trump was initially impeached between 2019 and 2020 amid claims he tried to solicit Ukrainian help to strengthen his electoral prospects.

In 2021, he faced impeachment once more after the January 6 Capitol riots, facing accusations of incitement of insurrection. So would Michael defend the 80-year-old POTUS once again?

He said: “Of course, I would be honoured to represent him again. It’s one of the highest areas of responsibility for a lawyer to defend the leader of the country, and they would be pleased to.

“But I don’t think it’ll be necessary, and I would urge everybody to be going forward rather than going backwards in that kind of a way. There would be no point to it. Really, the point of his second impeachment was to try to see if they could never have him running (again).

“If he’d been convicted, he would have been disqualified from holding public office again.”

Michael continued: “He’s not going to be able to have a third term, and so I don’t think the goal or the motivation or the objectives are there as they were in the last impeachment.”

He proceeded to explain: “The reasons to impeach him the last time don’t really exist this time – it would be a sheer political retribution to no end.

“The time, resources, manpower, energy that would go into something like that, it’d make this country a lot better place if you put all those resources and put them into the right priorities.”