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Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Grassoe from Bloomberg Radio.

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Speaker 1: The impeachment trial of President Trump is scheduled to begin

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Speaker 1: with opening statements on Tuesday, and today President Trump named

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Speaker 1: three lawyers that he's adding to the legal team that

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Speaker 1: will represent him at the impeachment. Harvard Law professor emeritus

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Speaker 1: Alan Dershowitz and former Whitewater prosecutors Kent Star and Robert

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Speaker 1: Ray will join the team led by White House counsel

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Speaker 1: Pat Sippoloni and j Seklo. Trump's personal attorney joining me

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Speaker 1: is Brad Moss, a partner at Mark Say so, Brad,

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Speaker 1: what do you make of the new additions? So this

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Speaker 1: is basically like a ninety nineties redux. You know, we've

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Speaker 1: got here. You know Alan Derschwitz certainly, you know, long

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Speaker 1: history of legal scholarship and everything. He's on o Ja's

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Speaker 1: defense team, well known in the constitutional field for his analysis,

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Speaker 1: but he had kind of fallen into obscurity for a

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Speaker 1: while until he came back as his big cable news

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Speaker 1: defender of Donald Trump. And you've got and Star, the

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Speaker 1: infamous Ken Starr, who you know led the Bill Clinton

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Speaker 1: impeachment move in the nineties. Try to get Clinton impeached

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Speaker 1: over the perjury and supporting perjury allegations, and then was

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Speaker 1: run out of Baylor University for allegedly botching responses a

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Speaker 1: sexual assault incidents. So it almost feels like it's a

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Speaker 1: past their prime legal team that was once really good

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Speaker 1: or at least really competent, and are now there because

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Speaker 1: the President likes how they coordinate and how they communicate

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Speaker 1: on TV, even though this necessarily have any relation to

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Speaker 1: how they would handle arguments in the Senate trial. Here,

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Speaker 1: you're going to have ken Starr, who during the Bill

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Speaker 1: Clinton impeachment certainly called upon the president to comply with

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Speaker 1: subpoenas and turnover documents out defending the president who has

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Speaker 1: not turned over any documents. Will that in any way

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Speaker 1: come back to bite him. I'm sure there will be

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Speaker 1: some level of hypocrisy point it out there. Um So,

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Speaker 1: I think the response that someone like ken Starr would

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Speaker 1: have to that is that he still afforded Bill Clinton

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Speaker 1: the opportunity to litigate a lot of those things in court. Uh.

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Speaker 1: You know, the Kennedy Star Report took several years to

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Speaker 1: compile and years of litigation over a lot of these

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Speaker 1: privileged claims, and that never happened here. Um A lot

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Speaker 1: of the disagreements over whether not to turn over documents

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Speaker 1: or let witnesses testify never got the court because the

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Speaker 1: House representatives decided not to wait, that they couldn't spend

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Speaker 1: three years litigating whether or not to compel testimony when

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Speaker 1: the election is coming up in November. In the alleged

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Speaker 1: impeachable conduct by the president concerns his his efforts to

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Speaker 1: interfere in this upcoming election. So, Brad, does it look though,

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Speaker 1: as if the Democrats are getting closer and closer to

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Speaker 1: having witnesses at the impeachment trial. I think it's more

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Speaker 1: likely than not there will be some witnesses. We've certainly

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Speaker 1: seen some cracks in the uh great red wall in

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Speaker 1: the Senate GOP caucus in terms of their you know,

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Speaker 1: amountability to witnesses, whether it's Susan Collins or Romney or

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Speaker 1: a number of individuals. I think there's some interest in it,

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Speaker 1: and part of that has to do with, you know,

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Speaker 1: the gamble that House Speaker Pelosi made in waiting until

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Speaker 1: after the holiday recess to take the extra steps to

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Speaker 1: actually transmit the articles to the Senate. She gambled and

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Speaker 1: was proven right. That with a little bit of additional time,

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Speaker 1: more information would come out that would put pressure on

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Speaker 1: these senators. Senators who don't necessarily particularly like the presidents

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Speaker 1: that they don't like his style or his mother communicating,

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Speaker 1: but are in the end still loyal Republicans. And the

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Speaker 1: things that happened was, you know, there was a lot

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Speaker 1: of information that came out of state through some of

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Speaker 1: this foil litigation being brought, and there was a lot

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Speaker 1: of details provided um through documents released by Left Parnis

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Speaker 1: it used to be part of the president's enter circle

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Speaker 1: in terms of this legal team and who had a

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Speaker 1: lot of damaging text messages, and that school to make

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Speaker 1: it politically difficult for some of these senators to allow

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Speaker 1: for just a short trial that doesn't allow for additional

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Speaker 1: information or witnesses. So tell us more about the information

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Speaker 1: that Les Partners has and what he's been saying in

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Speaker 1: some high profile television interviews. Parnisan to be very clear,

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Speaker 1: no one should take much of anything Left Parness says

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Speaker 1: without massive heaping grains of salt unless he's got actual verification,

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Speaker 1: you know, corroboration verified, unless he's got receipts that proved

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Speaker 1: what he's saying because the way he left Partners Talks,

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Speaker 1: and you can hear it in the interviews he has

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Speaker 1: with Rachel Maddowen Anderson Cooper is he's very Trumpian in

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Speaker 1: his way of communicating. He did a lot of exaggerations,

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Speaker 1: a lot of mischaracterizations, as you can't necessarily believe a

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Speaker 1: lot of what he is saying. But what he has

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Speaker 1: provided in terms of the receipts is how much this

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Speaker 1: was being run through Rudy Giuliani, how Rudy was sending

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Speaker 1: letters to the president elect of Ukraine, finding how he

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Speaker 1: was acting on behalf of Donald Trump. Something that you

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Speaker 1: know that the White House has tried to claim that

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Speaker 1: this was sort of Rudy going rogue and not actually

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Speaker 1: being connected to the president, well at least from the

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Speaker 1: appearances of what was in writing. It's here as Rudy

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Speaker 1: very much had the approval of the President. And then

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Speaker 1: he also got some more details about, you know, some

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Speaker 1: of this alleged stalking of the US ambassador in Ukraine, Ivanovitch.

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Speaker 1: We don't know for sure if this was just bloviating

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Speaker 1: or actual real stalking, but it sounded like they were

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Speaker 1: tracking her, they knew where she was going, and how

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Speaker 1: much security they had. This looks like a thuggish, you know,

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Speaker 1: mob operation the way this was done, and as more

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Speaker 1: information comes out, it's going to paint these individuals in

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Speaker 1: a worse light. Do you think that when they decide

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Speaker 1: what evidence to allow in that the recent government report

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Speaker 1: on the aid to Ukraine being held up being illegal,

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Speaker 1: will that come in. I mean that report will cimamly

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Speaker 1: be included in the ultimate evidence. So I don't think

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Speaker 1: that report from the g a O is going to

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Speaker 1: sway anybody one way or the other. Everybody has a

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Speaker 1: reason to always dispute the g a o s findings

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Speaker 1: when it suits their purposes. The g a O claimed

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Speaker 1: that the Obama administration had broken the law at different times,

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Speaker 1: when it came to the swap for Boberg Doll with

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Speaker 1: the Taliban, or when it came to parts of the

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Speaker 1: Bambacare exchanges. There's always something the a g a O

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Speaker 1: will find that any White House reblgander democrat won't dispute.

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Speaker 1: But it kind of supplements the existing record. And so

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Speaker 1: what is going to be critically important is who the

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Speaker 1: additional witnesses are, if any, particularly if it's my Pompeo

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Speaker 1: if it's John Bolton and if it's Rick Perry, all

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Speaker 1: of whom, as far as we understand, have critical firsthand

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Speaker 1: knowledge of what was going on with this quote unquote

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Speaker 1: drug deal, as John Bolton called it, but who have

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Speaker 1: not yet provided any testimony. President Trump has already said

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Speaker 1: that if Bolton testifies, there are going to be questions

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Speaker 1: of executive privilege. So what happens then? So this is

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Speaker 1: somewhat unprecedented here because we didn't have this in the

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Speaker 1: Clintons trial, and obviously Nix never got this far. But

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Speaker 1: the way it would work LUSA, under my understanding of

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Speaker 1: the parliamentary procedure is the initial motion to squash or

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Speaker 1: to exclude from the testimony would go before Chief Justice Roberts,

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Speaker 1: who is presiding over the trial. He could issue a

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Speaker 1: ruling one way or the other, but that ruling can

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Speaker 1: be overturned by a majority of the senators. So, if

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Speaker 1: for example, Chief Justice Roberts concluded the privilege did not

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Speaker 1: apply and ordered Bolton to still testify about this information,

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Speaker 1: a majority of the senators could overrule him and determine

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Speaker 1: that they were going to exclude that anyways. And that

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Speaker 1: kind of determination LuSE as far as I am aware,

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Speaker 1: cannot be otherwise subject to judicial review or anything else.

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Speaker 1: That's final. Thanks Brad, that's Brad Mas's apartment. Mark Z

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Speaker 1: thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can

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Speaker 1: subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,

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Speaker 1: and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Basso.

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Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg, the d D of the