Q: Professor Sen, thanks so much for joining us and telling us a little bit about what this means for the investigation. Are these campaign contributions evidence that there is bias on this team?

There's a lot going on here. First, I want to make clear the nature of the attacks that are being waged on the Mueller investigation. Bob Mueller has gone out and recruited some of the most elite, finest federal prosecutors in the entire country. These are folks who've gone to the top law schools, who have the top experience, they've worked on many cases.

I think one of the attorneys he's hired has argued several dozen cases before the Supreme Court. He has assembled this amazing high powered team of federal prosecutors, 15, 16, 17 of them, to investigate thoroughly allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Now, what we're seeing in response to this coming out of Trump administration officials, Trump surrogates on news, kinda flashes on conservative media, are concerns and attacks that Bob Mueller's investigation is biased in part, because of his legal team and the fact that many lawyers that he's recruited to serve on this legal team have donated to Democrats. Democrats including Hillary Clinton, who's Donald Trump's opponent in the 2016 election.

The argument that's been made is that, how can they possibly be unbiased and non partisan if they supported Donald Trump's opponent in the election just last year. We hear the claim that this is a political witch hunt, that this is a bias investigation, this is a partisan investigation being led by Democrats, being coordinated by Democrats. It is true that Mueller has assembled a team where a lot of attorneys that he's brought on did donate more to Democrats than to Republicans. They're factually correct in terms of that simple assertion.

Now, is this evidence of bias? That's a separate question. The thing that my co-authors and I have argued is that, not really, this isn't really a clear assertion of bias, this is a clear demonstration of bias. Well, why isn't it? We have spent a lot of time studying the legal profession and studying partisanship and political contributions made by lawyers. In fact, there's a simple reason why it's not necessarily evidence of bias, which is that, elite lawyers tend to lean toward Democratic candidates.

Just to give you some figures on this. Of lawyers who've made political contributions, about two-thirds of them have given more money to Democratic candidates than to Republican candidates. It's a lot. Once you look at graduates of the very top programs, we would call that the top 14, the T14 law schools. These are the law schools that basically Bob Mueller's federal prosecutors graduated from. So, we're talking about Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of Chicago, Stanford, schools like that.

The legal profession actually gets even more Democratically leaning in terms of who they contribute to. Once you look at lawyers who've gone to these programs, of the ones that have made political contributions, about three-fourths of them donate more to Democrats than to Republicans.

The simple fact is that, Bob Mueller just actually went out and hired people regardless of ideology. If he did that, we would expect to a legal team that actually looks an awful lot like the one he ended up hiring. Which, is one where a lot of the lawyers actually donate more money to Democrats than to Republicans.

