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I would also point out that Trump’s primary goal here is not what we may think it is. The posts on this thread are all predicated on an argument over two goals: (1) avoid conviction vs. (2) expose election fraud. I believe Trump’s mindset is closer to Item (2), but his real goal here is to completely discredit and undermine the Biden/Harris administration from the start. And that will extend to any Republicans who don’t stand up and fight them with the passion of a thousand white-hot suns, too.

If that is his goal, he had better make a much more impressive showing of evidence in the Senate than he made in the courts after the election. Otherwise, the result will be to discredit and undermine his own supporters, and probably convince a good number of Republican senators to change their minds and vote to convict.

I actually think McConnell’s spokeswoman’s view is at least as likely: Trump dismissed his expensive lawyers because the outcome of the trial is no longer in doubt and he doesn’t need them.

He did the exact same thing after the election. Within a couple weeks, he fired his professional election lawyers and replaced them with small-time activist lawyers and Giuliani. Conventional wisdom was that they withdrew due to harassment, but I don’t believe it. Instead, I think it was either: (1) A disagreement over strategy because the lawyers weren’t willing to pursue fraud allegations without evidence; or (2) He didn’t want to spend big-firm lawyer money after it quickly became clear that litigation was futile, and instead only spent what he needed to in order to put on a show. Based on their litigation strategy (such as it was), I tend to think it was the latter.