Trump defense team uncertain ahead of Senate trial
With Trump facing a Senate trial as soon as next week, he has no organized defense team as his top lawyers have refused to represent him.
White House counsel Pat Cipollone, his deputies, and outside lawyers Jay Sekulow, and Jane and Marty Raskin are not expected to be involved.
Trump has been increasingly irritated with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and hasn’t been taking his calls, according to sources familiar with the matter, though Giuliani has been spotted in the West Wing recently.
And former Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz is not on board yet, though aides to the president have had discussion with him about joining the team.
Another attorney, John Eastman, whose extremist positions have troubled some members of the president’s legal team recently, is expected to take some sort of role in Trump’s impeachment defense.
Eastman represented the president in the Texas dispute and has previously pushed a racist conspiracy theory about Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
Trump has asked top aides about how a Senate trial would look this time around. As he did during his first impeachment, Trump raised the idea of testifying himself, which aides dissuaded him from pursuing.
-ABC News' Katherine Faulders and John Santucci