Trump Lawyer: The President Has No ‘Impeachment Preparation Team’

https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1143976349121441792

Jay Sekulow, one of President Donald Trump‘s attorneys, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday that the president has no “impeachment preparation team in place” as impeachment is not viewed as a real threat.

Tapper noted that one-third of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is on record saying they want impeachment proceedings. “You’re not preparing?” Tapper asked Sekulow.

“We have no impeachment preparation team in place,” Sekulow said. “So, no.”

“You just said it,” Sekulow continued. “So one-third of what they would need wants impeachment and two-thirds do not.”

“It does not bode well for them on reelection,” Sekulow said of Democratic lawmakers from key districts, adding, “I don’t see impeachment as a threat at all.”

Sekulow otherwise said that Team Trump has no plans of attempting to block former Special Counsel Robert Mueller from testifying before Congress on July 17.

“There are no legal moves that are being made here,” he said.

House Democrats, after saying that they would likely do so at some point this week due to time constraints, subpoenaed Mueller to compel his testimony.

Sekulow predicted in a Fox News op-ed Wednesday that Democrats’ “partisan move” to subpoena Mueller will “backfire on them — significantly.”

“The hearing — set up by the angry Democrats — will provide a forum where the rest of the story about the Russia investigation must be told. But the problem for Democrats is that Mueller will not provide any new information,” he wrote.

While Mueller said publicly that his report is his testimony and that it is important the work of the Special Counsel’s Office speak for itself, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has made it clear that Mueller will be asked questions “that are outside the report.”

“We’re going to be asking questions. He has to go to what’s in the report, but we’re going to be asking questions that are outside the report,” Schiff said. “The attorney general [William Barr] has made it clear that he feels completely free to discuss matters not in the report. In fact, the attorney general felt free to mischaracterize the report.”

Sekulow told Jake Tapper that it “certainly would be inappropriate” if Mueller made any new revelations.

In his op-ed, Sekulow posed a series of “difficult questions” he thinks Mueller “must be asked”:

When did you know that there was, in fact, no collusion or conspiracy by the Trump campaign with Russia?

What did you do with evidence gathered by former FBI agent Peter Strzok?

Why did you not take an inventory of the contents of Strzok’s phone when he was terminated?

Why did you allow the phone to be wiped clean and be reissued?

Do you really believe it is the job of a prosecutor to exonerate a person after an investigation? Did you not conflate the prosecution’s burden of proof?

[Image via Image via CNN screengrab]