A day after Senators took an oath of impartiality in the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump, the President eagerly announced the team of lawyers who will be defending him.
Two names on the list stood out.
One was Ken Starr, who famously led the investigation against former President Bill Clinton ahead of his impeachment. He now acts as a political commentator for Fox News.
The other was Alan Dershowitz, the lawyer of the late child rapist and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Dershowitz also frequently appears on Fox News providing legal analysis.
Starr was on Epstein's defense team in 2007 as well.
Dershowitz later distanced himself from Trump's impeachment team, saying that he wasn't a full-fledged member, but instead would present a case intended to document a so-called abuse of impeachment.
Former Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, took to Twitter to brag about the supposed quality of Trump's defense lawyers versus two of the House Democrats acting as impeachment managers and prosecutors against Trump.
Gingrich's goal was to make Congressmen Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Gerrold Nadler (D-NY) look unqualified next to Dershowitz and Starr.
That's not how people took the tweet.
Nevertheless, Gingrich was right...in a way.
Trump himself called Ken Starr a "lunatic" in 1999.
Another name on Trump's defense list is drawing concern as well.
Lev Parnas, the right-hand man of Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, claimed this week that Trump knew all about the efforts to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigations that were politically beneficial to Trump. The President wholeheartedly denied knowing Parnas or anything about his efforts.
But an email from Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow, to another Trump lawyer, John Dowd, is calling that into question.
Sekulow states explicitly that he spoke to the President about allowing Dowd to represent Parnas in his trial for illegally funneling foreign money into Republican political campaigns.
Sekulow will be representing Trump in the impeachment trial as well if the conflict of interest isn't addressed.
@GregAbbott_TX/X
