Trump legal team's ineptitude may have put impeachment back on the table: CNN guest

Julian Epstein, the former Democratic Chief Counsel at the House Judiciary Committee, told CNN on Thursday that the Trump White House's decision to launch an angry attack on special counsel Robert Mueller could be a grave miscalculation.

Epstein said that the letter Trump attorney Emmett Flood sent to Attorney General William Barr -- in which he said Mueller and his team of prosecutors "failed in their duty" -- would only make things worse for President Donald Trump in the weeks ahead.

"I think that they are barking up the wrong tree if they are trying to make an argument that Mueller somehow overstepped," he said. "All they are going to do is antagonize Mueller and make things worse for them."

Epstein went on to say that this strategy is particularly baffling because it seemed like the White House was poised to put this entire investigation behind them.

"There was a road map for them to get this Russia matter, I think, concluded before the end of the summer, and what they are doing is they are stealing defeat from the jaws of victory," he said. "Barr's obfuscation of what the Mueller report really was... they are making decisions that are only going to put steel in the spine of the Democrats on the Hill, increase the narrative, buttress the narrative that this administration is corrupt."

Epstein concluded by arguing that "impeachment was a dead issue" for Democrats a week ago and "I'm not sure that's the case anymore."

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