Jon A. Sale of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough.

Rudy Giuliani has turned to Jon Sale, a former prosecutor now practicing at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, to represent him in the budding congressional impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump and his foreign affairs.

Sale confirmed his representation of Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, to ALM on Tuesday. Sale, who was law school classmates with Giuliani, was an assistant special Watergate prosecutor. He is of counsel at Nelson Mullins in Miami and co-chairs the firm's white-collar and government investigations practice group.

Besides his Watergate experience, Sale's government experience includes serving as assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York and in Connecticut. He was also the chief assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Florida.

Multiple media outlets have reported that House committees have subpoenaed Giuliani for documents related to Ukraine as they press ahead with an impeachment inquiry announced in the wake of a whistleblower complaint.

Sale said he is representing Giuliani in connection with a subpoena from Congress and "anything else" related to the House inquiry that may come up.

Sale noted that the subpoena asks for emails and any interactions with people related to Ukraine. It calls for a significant number of documents, he said, "not unlike the subpoenas I deal with all the time." He said it was too early to say whether Guliani would comply with the subpoena requests.

"We're going to follow what the law requires," Sale said.

But he added that he did not see any legal exposure for Giuliani.

"He 100 percent did not do anything illegal," Sale said, adding, "I think the congressional forum is very partisan."

"It's not a friendly forum, so we just have to be very careful legally," Sale said. "There are a lot of very complex issues, a lot of privilege issues, constitutional issues. We just have to be very careful and analyze them and act responsibly."

Meanwhile, Giuliani is still representing Trump, as far as Sale knows, he said, adding that he doesn't see any conflict with that. "There's no difference of opinion," he said.

But, Sale added, "there are privilege issues which require us to consult with the president and White House counsel." His client, Giuliani, has to honor attorney-client privilege, he said. "I don't think the president has waived attorney-client privilege."

Sale said he knew of no plans for Giuliani to hire other lawyers in the investigation, but "I always welcome—I never mind—the help of good lawyers." He couldn't say whether anyone else at Nelson Mullins will be working with him on the matter. "I haven't had the chance to assess the needs yet," he said. "I've been reading and talking to the media today. I'm going to shut my door."

Sale said he and Giuliani served as assistants together in the federal prosecutor's office. He was a senior counselor for Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign, an unpaid position. However, he said he was not a lawyer for the campaign then, and this is the first time he has represented Giuliani. "I've stayed close with him professionally and socially since law school," Sale said.

Asked whether he sees any parallels between this representation and his experience during the investigation of President Richard Nixon, he said, "All I can say about Watergate, it was a great learning experience," but "it was a different time and totally different situation that involved, ultimately, White House tapes."

In an ALM profile earlier this year, Sale described his experience after the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon ordered the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox. "We thought our careers were done. That was it," he said. "We were annihilated. … But so what? We did the right thing."

In Florida, Sale has served on the Judicial Nominating Commission, numerous court committees and two state governor transitional advisory teams, becoming, as one Miami attorney put it, "the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the criminal defense bar."

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