The president's lawyer is lawyering up.
Rudy Giuliani hired longtime friend and former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale on Tuesday to represent him in the House investigation into whether President Donald Trump should be impeached.
In a phone interview with the New York Daily News, Sale confirmed he will represent the former New York-mayor-turned-Trump attorney as the Ukraine-focused impeachment inquiry picks up speed.
But Sale wouldn't say outright whether Giuliani will comply with a subpoena issued Monday by the House Intelligence Committee for a slew of records and communications relating to Giuliani's attempts on Trump's behalf to push Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden.
"It's a complicated issue," Sale said. "There are a lot of privilege issues and constitutional issues so we have to analyze it."
Sale declined to say whether he had been in touch with the White House, but said there's "legitimate" reason for him to coordinate with the president and his lawyers.
"The White House has legitimate interest to determine if there's executive privilege and the president has legitimate interest to determine whether there's attorney-client privilege," Sale said. "I won't say what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it, but those issues are always at play."
Sale, who went to law school with Giuliani and worked on his failed 2008 campaign for president, is best known for his work as an assistant special prosecutor during the Watergate investigation that resulted in President Richard Nixon's resignation in the face of near-certain impeachment.
This time around, Sale will be on the other side of the field, defending Giuliani against allegations that he tried to strong-arm Ukrainian officials into launching investigations into Biden and others in order to help Trump's 2020 reelection bid.
Giuliani has repeatedly said Ukraine should investigate whether Biden used his power as vice president to help his son, Hunter Biden, evade prosecuting in Ukraine on corruption charges relating to a fossil fuel company. There's no evidence to back up any of Giuliani's claims and Democrats say he's lying to help Trump.
