Trump adds infamous Clinton impeachment leader Ken Starr to legal team

Donald Trump is getting help with his impeachment defense from two controversial lawyers: Ken Starr, the prosecutor whose investigation led to former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and Alan Dershowitz, the scandal-plagued lawyer who faces questions over his ties to alleged child rapist Jeffrey Epstein.

Both men are regulars on Fox News, Trump’s favorite cable television network.

It’s unclear what role Starr will play on the defense team. However, Starr’s far-reaching Whitewater investigation into Clinton is what ultimately uncovered his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The GOP’s investigation of the affair led to Clinton’s impeachment on perjury charges, after Clinton denied the affair under oath.

Dershowitz, on the other hand, plans to focus on the constitutional argument against impeachment, he told CNBC on Friday morning. Dershowitz was a constitutional law professor at Harvard.

“The president asked me to do this, and the legal team asked me to do this,” Dershowitz told CNBC.

Dershowitz later clarified on “The Dan Abrams Show” that he would not be a “full-fledged” member of Trump’s legal team, but would “provide an hourlong constitutional defense of the president before the Senate as Trump goes on trial next week,” according to Mediaite.

“I think it overstates it to say I’m a member of the Trump team,” he said Friday afternoon. “I was asked to present the constitutional argument that I would have presented had Hillary Clinton been elected and had she been impeached. I was asked to present my constitutional argument against impeachment.”

He added, “I will be there for one hour, basically, presenting my argument. But I’m not a full-fledged member of the defense team in any realistic sense of that term.”

Monica Lewinsky, the intern Clinton had an affair with and whose life was turned upside down by the impeachment trial, was aghast that Trump would hire Starr.

“This is definitely an ‘are you fucking kidding me?’ kinda day,” Lewinsky tweeted.

Trump’s impeachment trial is set to begin next week in the Senate.

Senators were sworn in on Thursday, vowing to be impartial jurors, even though a number of GOP lawmakers have explicitly said they don’t plan to be objective.

Ahead of the trial, more evidence has emerged that Trump’s scheme to force Ukraine into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden by withholding military aid was illegal.

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office on Thursday released a report saying that the withholding of aid violated the law.

And Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, released a trove of documents and evidence tying Trump directly to the scheme.

Trump faces impeachment charges of abuse of power for the attempt to force Ukraine to investigate Biden and obstruction of Congress for blocking witness testimony and withholding other evidence from House investigators.

This article has been updated to include recent comments from Alan Dershowitz and to clarify his role in the impeachment trial.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.