Members of Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team includes Pat Cipollone, Jay Sekulow, Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr, Rober Ray, Mike Purpura, Patrick Philbin, and Pam Bondi.
Pat Cipollone
Pat Cipollone is an American lawyer who serves as White House Counsel for President Donald Trump. He was a law clerk for Judge Danny Boggs of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit from 1991–1992, and served as an assistant to Attorney General William P. Barr from 1992–1993.
Cipollone was a partner at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, and prior to taking over as White House Counsel was a partner at Stein, Mitchell, Cipollone, Beato & Missner, where he practiced commercial litigation. His clients included President Donald Trump, Radio Ingraham LLC, and Sony Entertainment.
Jay Sekulow
Jay Sekulow is a private attorney for Donald Trump. He was initially hired during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He is chief counsel at the American Center for Law & Justice. He has argued dozens of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Sekulow hosts a radio and television talk show and is a frequent guest commentator on Fox News Channel and on the Christian Broadcasting Network.
Alan Dershowitz
Alan Dershowitz is an American lawyer and academic. He is a scholar of United States constitutional law and criminal law. He has also been described as a noted civil libertarian. He began his teaching career at Harvard Law School where, in 1967, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor of law in its history. He held the Felix Frankfurter professorship there from 1993 until his retirement in December 2013, and has been a regular media contributor, political commentator, and legal analyst. He is also a prominent voice on the Arab–Israeli conflict and has written a several books on the subject.
Dershowitz successfully defended former National Football League star O.J. Simpson on charges of murdering his wife and a friend of hers in 1995 and represented financier Jeffrey Epstein against sex crime charges, for which he pleaded guilty in 2008.
Dershowitz says he voted for Trump’s Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton in 2016.
According to Trump’s legal team, Dershowitz will present constitutional arguments against impeachment and removal from office at the Senate trial.
“He is participating in this impeachment trial to defend the integrity of the Constitution and to prevent the creation of a dangerous constitutional precedent,” the legal team said in a prepared statement.
Ken Starr
Ken Starr is an American lawyer who served as a United States circuit judge and 39th Solicitor General of the United States. He is best known for heading an investigation of members of the Clinton administration known as the Whitewater controversy and this investigation widened to include Clinton’s sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. As the former independent counsel Ken Starr’s investigation paved the way for the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton in 1998. The House voted to impeach Clinton but the Senate acquitted him.
Ken Starr served as the dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law and was President of Baylor University in Texas, the world’s largest Baptist college.
Robert Ray
Robert Ray is an American lawyer. As the successor to Ken Starr as the head of the Office of the Independent Counsel he investigated and issued the final reports on the Whitewater scandal, the White House travel office controversy, and the White House FBI files controversy.
Ray has been in private practice as a white collar defense attorney since 2002.
Mike Purpura
Mike Purpura is a deputy White House counsel. He served in the counsel’s office under former Republican President George W. Bush, where he worked also worked on responses to congressional investigations.
Patrick Philbin
Patrick Philbin is an American lawyer who serves as Deputy Counsel to the President and Deputy Assistant to the President in the Office of White House Counsel in the Donald J. Trump administration. He previously served as a political appointee in the Department of Justice during the George W. Bush administration.
Philbin came to the White House after being a partner at a private law firm. He also clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Both he and Mike Purpura joined the Trump White House counsel’s office in January 2019.
Pam Bondi
Pam Bondi is a Trump advisor, who joined Trump’s communications team for the impeachment investigation in November 2019. She is an American attorney, lobbyist and politician. A Republican, she served as the 37th Florida Attorney General from 2011 to 2019.
