US President Donald Trump has assembled a made-for-TV legal team for his US Senate trial that includes household names like Kenneth Starr, the prosecutor whose investigation two decades ago resulted in the impeachment of then-US president Bill Clinton.
Former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said that he would deliver constitutional arguments meant to shield Trump from allegations that he abused his power.
The additions on Friday brought experience in the politics of impeachment as well as constitutional law to the team, which faced a busy weekend of deadlines for legal briefs before opening arguments begin on Tuesday even as more evidence rolled in.
The two new Trump attorneys are already nationally known both for their involvement in some of the more consequential legal dramas of recent US history and for their regular appearances on Fox News, the US president’s preferred TV network.
Dershowitz is a constitutional expert whose expansive views of presidential powers echo those of Trump.
Starr is a veteran of partisan battles in Washington, having led the investigation into Clinton’s affair with a White House intern that brought about his impeachment by the US House of Representatives.
Clinton was acquitted at his Senate trial.
Still, the lead roles for Trump’s defense would be played by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, who also represented Trump during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Democrats released more documents late on Friday from Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, with photographs, text and audio, as they make their case against the US president over his actions toward Ukraine.
There are some signs of tension involving Trump’s outside legal team and lawyers within the White House.
Some White House officials bristled that the announcement was not coordinated with them.
The White House waited until late on Friday night to confirm the full roster of Trump’s lawyers.
Hours after Dershowitz announced his involvement with the team in a series of tweets, he played down his role by saying that he would be present for only an hour or so to make constitutional arguments.
“I’m not a full-fledged member of the defense team,” he told The Dan Abrams Show on SiriusXM.
He has long been a critic of “the overuse of impeachment,” he said, and would have made the same case for a president Hillary Rodham Clinton.
A legal brief laying out the contours of the Trump defense, due at noon tomorrow, was still being drafted.
Those inside the Trump administration have echoed warnings from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that the pleadings must be sensitive to the Senate’s more staid traditions and leave the sharper rhetoric to Twitter and cable news.
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