Former President Donald Trump's new legal team was announced Sunday after it was revealed the day previously that his entire team quit.

CNN's Jim Acosta tweeted a release from the Trump team announcing the two men who will lead up the effort. The release indicates that they're already turning away from Trump's claims of a "stolen election" defense and returning to the "it's unconstitutional to hold a trial" defense.

"Trial lawyers David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor Jr., will head his impeachment defense legal team, bringing national profiles and significant trial experience in high-profile cases to the effort. Notably, Schoen has already been working with the 45th President and other advisors to prepare for the upcoming trial and both Schoen and Castor agree that this impeachment is unconstitutional - a fact 45 Senators voted in agreement with last week," the release said.

President Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party raised $255.4 million in the eight-plus weeks following the Nov. 3 election, new federal filings show, as he sought to undermine and overturn the results with unfounded accusations of fraud.

Mr. Trump’s strongest fund-raising came in the immediate aftermath of the election, such as after major media organizations declared that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won on Nov. 7. But even as Mr. Trump and his legal team lost case after case — in venues including the Supreme Court — his donors continued to give repeatedly. More than two million contributions flowed in to Mr. Trump, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts from Nov. 24 through the end of the year.

The donations were made public over the weekend in a Federal Election Commission filing by WinRed, the digital platform that Republicans use to process online donations. Mr. Trump’s campaign committee, joint committees with the R.N.C., and the new political action committee he formed after the election, Save America, will all file additional disclosures on Sunday with more details on spending and fund-raising.

Mr. Trump had previously announced that he and the R.N.C. had raised $207.5 million in the first month following the election. The new records show that his fund-raising fell sharply in December compared with November, with an especially notable dip after Dec. 14, the day the Electoral College formally cast its ballots to make Mr. Biden the nation’s 46th president, and reality may have set in for some of Mr. Trump’s supporters about the futility of the efforts to overturn the result.

The tense two days began Jan. 18. The New York Times, citing two people briefed on the matter, reported that Trump was considering commuting the 6 ½-year sentence of Silver from a 2018 corruption conviction. The conviction was related to Silver accepting $700,000 in fees from a Manhattan tax law firm for steering cases to it from real estate developers who were seeking Silver’s support for rent-control legislation and in other matters.

Trump had known and worked with Silver for decades in Albany on legislation concerning Trump’s building developments and the state’s approval of casinos. The story was preceded by a Times tweet.

"I went ballistic when I saw that," Buffalo developer Carl Paladino, the 2010 GOP nominee for governor, said of the tweet. Paladino said he sent a message to a Trump ally whom he wouldn’t identify, saying that Silver "was not deserving of a pardon. He was the worst scoundrel to ever work in New York State."

Then came a tweet that surprised many.

"Make no mistake," tweeted the state Republican Party under chairman Nick Langworthy, one of Trump’s most loyal allies. "Disgraced former NYS Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver deserves no clemency or pardon. Silver deserves to actually serve the jail time that he was sentenced for selling the incredible power he yielded to enrich himself. He was a corrupt and dishonest politician."

Acting Alaska Attorney General Ed Sniffen’s abrupt resignation was announced Friday as the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica were preparing an article about allegations of sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old girl three decades ago.

Nikki Dougherty White, now 47, recently contacted the news organizations with a detailed account of how she and Sniffen began a sexual relationship in 1991 while she was a student at West Anchorage High School. At the time, he was a 27-year-old attorney with a local law firm and a coach of her school’s mock trial competition team.

The sexual relationship began during a trip to New Orleans for a national competition when she was 17, and it continued for about two years back in Anchorage, she said.

One of White’s former teammates said White confided in her about the sexual encounter with Sniffen while the team was still in New Orleans. A second former teammate said he learned of the sexual encounter around the same time, possibly on the plane ride home. A third teammate remembered hearing that something inappropriate had happened between Sniffen and White upon the team’s return to Anchorage.