“You could impeach him but he’s never going to be there for the trial. They’ll never have a trial in the Senate,” Sekulow said on his radio show. “Why would you put the country through that when the man’s term is over with and you got the ultimate victory your candidate is going to be the president of the United States?”

But the sentiment articulated by Dershowitz and Sekulow wasn’t shared across the spectrum. And, indeed, some lawyers who previously represented the president said the case currently being presented against him is stronger than the one he ultimately fended off in a Senate trial.

“Unlike the last time, where they didn’t even charge a crime, I could imagine that you could draft an article of impeachment that would actually make a legal argument that the president aided or abetted or actually elicited a riot,” said Robert Ray, a member of the president’s defense team during the last impeachment.