With his Senate trial to begin in earnest next week, President Trump has added some high-profile lawyers to his legal team, including Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz and former independent counsel Ken Starr.
Word of the new firepower came as House impeachment managers and Trump’s attorneys scrambled to produce legal briefs ahead of the Senate’s return Tuesday after the holiday weekend.
The Senate trial opened Thursday amid new allegations about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, including an assertion from Lev Parnas, a former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, that Trump knew of Parnas’s role in the effort to dig up dirt in Ukraine that could benefit the president politically.
The impeachment charges center on the allegation that Trump withheld military aid and a White House meeting to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, including former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
It’s a Fox News driven defense for Trump.
A report by Media Matters for America this afternoon tallied at least 125 Fox News appearances by Starr during the period, and at least 110 appearances by Dershowitz.
Starr, one of the additions to Trump’s legal team, was once characterized as a “freak” by Trump, according to a New York Times column by Maureen Dowd, which she resurrected today.
“Remember that time in 1999 when Trump told me: ‘Starr’s a freak. I bet he’s got something in his closet,’ ” Dowd said in a tweet that included a link to her two-decade old column.
The column captured Trump offering his take on a range of people, including Starr, the independent counsel whose report detailing President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky led to his impeachment by the House.
Footage also resurfaced today of Trump leveling similar criticism of Starr during an interview on NBC’s “Today” show.
“I think Ken Starr is a lunatic,” Trump said. “I really think that Kenn Starr is a disaster. … I really think that Ken Starr was terrible.”
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said today that he considered the addition to Trump’s legal team of Starr — the former independent counsel whose report led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment — a “weird choice.”
“I’m looking at it as a former prosecutor, lawyer,” Leahy said during an appearance on MSNBC. “He pushed the weakest impeachment case certainly in my lifetime, and now he’s up here to defend the strongest impeachment case in my lifetime. That’s their choice. But it’s a weird choice.”
Trump referenced his impeachment today as he welcomed the Louisiana State University Tigers to the White House to celebrate their national football championship.
Toward the end of the event in the East Room, Trump said he was inviting players to come with him to the Oval Office to take pictures.
“We’ll take pictures behind the Resolute Desk,” Trump said. “It’s been there a long time. A lot of presidents. Some good, some not so good. But you’ve got a good one now, even though they’re trying to impeach the son of a bitch. Can you believe that? Can you believe that?”
Trump’s comments came shortly after he was presented with an LSU jersey bearing his last name and the number 45.