Does Pres. Trump believe Mueller investigation is part of a “witch hunt”? “Yeah,” Trump legal team member Jay Sekulow tells @jonkarl. pic.twitter.com/bg0KxJyS9u
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) July 16, 2017
Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow is making the morning show rounds on Sunday, taking shots at the Russia investigation. On This Week, he insisted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s probe into alleged collusion between Moscow and the POTUS’ campaign was shady because of memos by fired FBI Director James Comey.
“James Comey takes notes of a conversation, or a series of conversations with the President of the United States,” Sekulow said. Comey put those notes “on a government computer, in his government vehicle, puts them in his government desk,” and after getting fired, sent those memos to a friend, who would send those to the New York Times. That way, a special counsel could be appointed to investigate the Russia allegations.
“So the special counsel is based on evidence that was illegally leaked,” Sekulow said. “And that to me raises questions about the whole spectrum of what’s going on here.”
According to a report from The Hill, Comey’s memos contained classified information, but it didn’t say he released any classified info.
The fired-FBI Director testified that President Donald Trump asked him to drop an FBI investigation into then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The New York Times originally reported this conversation thanks to information given to them by Columbia University Law Professor Daniel Richman. Shortly after POTUS fired the FBI Director, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller, a former FBI Director himself, to special counsel.
Critics have suggested that the president committed obstruction of justice with this request and the Comey firing. It’s debatable whether the relevant statute is broad enough, however.
It’s also completely uncertain whether Comey broke the law by leaking the memos, however. It is still too early to say he violated any statute, said Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. He appeared on Fox Business on Monday to say there still needed to be an investigation into the matter.
From our original story on Dershowitz’s Fox Business appearance:
Before hurling allegations of criminal wrongdoing, Dershowitz said a proper investigation would be necessary first. Until then, Comey’s critics are jumping to premature conclusions, which he says Trump’s critics are guilty of doing as well. “I think President Trump is making the same mistake that his critics make …. He’s rushing to judgment about whether something is illegal, and second, he’s trying to criminalize political differences.”
In any case, Sekulow didn’t say how the Special Counsel’s investigation was specifically compromised.
[Screengrab via ABC]
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