Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr join Trump impeachment legal team

The White House has unveiled Donald Trump’s legal
team for his Senate impeachment trial, a list of attorneys whose own ageing
controversies threaten to overshadow their efforts to defend the president.
As the impeachment process enters a major new phase
next week, Trump’s defense team will include Alan Dershowitz, known for
defending the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and Kenneth Starr, the
dogged prosecutor who led the investigation that culminated in the 1998
impeachment of former president Bill Clinton and lost a university post in 2016
for mishandling sexual assaults on campus.
“This is
definitely an ‘are you fucking kidding me?’ kinda day,” tweeted Monica
Lewinsky, whom Starr reportedly threatened with criminal charges in 1998 to get
her to testify in forensic detail about her relationship with Clinton, which
became a central focus of the impeachment inquiry against him.
Dershowitz sought to deny in a radio interview
Friday afternoon that he was a “member of the Trump legal team”, saying that he
would speak on behalf of the US constitution. But he has been invited to speak
by Trump, he is expected to speak during the time allotted to Trump’s defense
and he will make an argument that effectively and exclusively encourages the
president’s acquittal.
The question of how Trump’s legal team will defend
him sharpened as the House of Representatives, which impeached Trump last
month, handed over the process to the Senate, where a trial will culminate in a
vote on whether to remove Trump from office.
The trial is expected to last at least two weeks and
could feature testimony by close Trump advisers and former advisers who have
yet to speak out on allegations that Trump withheld military aid and a White
House meeting from Ukraine in an effort to manufacture damaging headlines about
the former vice-president Joe Biden, a political rival.
Trump was impeached for abuse of power in the scheme
and for obstructing the efforts of Congress to investigate it.
A two-thirds majority of senators present would be
required to remove Trump from office. Most political observers think he is
safe, given the lockstep loyalty of Republicans, who hold a majority in the
Senate.
But an element of unpredictability in the
impeachment trial means that neither Trump nor his Republican surrogates are
quite in control of the president’s political fate.
If Democrats can recruit just a few Republican
senators to join their call for witnesses to testify at the Senate trial, new
details about Trump’s attempt to extract a “favor” from Ukraine could emerge,
with unknown consequences for his approval rating as he seeks re-election in
November.
A majority of American voters have consistently said
in opinion polls that Trump abused his power and deserves impeachment,
including in polling directed by conservative media organizations.
Trump’s legal team will be led by the White House
counsel, Pat Cipollone, and by Jay Sekulow, a longtime personal lawyer to
Trump. Also defending Trump will be Pam Bondi, a White House impeachment
adviser; Jane Raskin, who defended Trump during the Robert Mueller inquiry into
Russian interference in the 2016 US election; and Robert Ray, who was on the
independent counsel team with Starr in the Clinton era.
As White House counsel, Cipollone’s strict role is
to give legal advice pertaining to the presidency, as opposed to defending
Trump personally. But he has been embroiled in impeachment since he signed an
October letter declaring that the White House would not turn over documents or
otherwise cooperate with impeachment investigators – a letter that Democrats
later made exhibit A of Trump’s obstruction of Congress.
Dershowitz, 81, a retired professor of constitutional
law at Harvard University, and Starr, 73, formerly president of Baylor
University in Texas, have demonstrated their loyalty to Trump in frequent
appearances on cable television.
But their presence in the Senate chamber for Trump’s
impeachment trial could complicate certain features of Trump’s defense,
including the attempt by top Republicans to block new witness testimony.
In arguing for witnesses, Democrats will be able to
point to the extraordinarily wide net for testimony that Starr cast in his
five-year investigation of Clinton, which included interviews with
ex-boyfriends of Lewinsky and the White House window washers.
Continuing controversies attached to Starr and
Dershowitz, both of whom worked as lawyers for Epstein, who killed himself in a
New York jail cell last year, could distract from the effort to exculpate
Trump.
Starr stepped down as president of Baylor in 2016
following an investigation into allegations that he failed to respond to a
sexual assault crisis involving the school’s football team. Starr was not found
guilty of wrongdoing and the two sides described the separation as a mutual
agreement.
Dershowitz, a prominent first amendment litigator,
found deeper notoriety as a friend and adviser to Epstein.
One of Epstein’s victims has accused Dershowitz in
court of sexually abusing and defaming her; in November, he countersued,
denying any misconduct and claiming that he was being defamed and subjected to
emotional distress.
Dershowitz has said he was “shocked” to learn the
“extent” of Epstein’s crimes and said Epstein’s case was the one from his
career that he regretted taking.
Apart from Lewinsky, the announcement of Trump’s
team was met with degrees of disgust and mirth.
David Frum, a former speechwriter for George W Bush,
tweeted: “Cannot believe it’s possible to hire this calibre of representation
without paying a nickel for it.”