Special counsel ‘unconstitutional’

legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?’’

Just over an hour later, Trump posted, ‘‘The appointment of the Special Councel (sic) is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL! Despite that, we play the game because I, unlike the Democrats, have done nothing wrong!’’

He later re-sent the tweet with the word ‘‘counsel’’ spelled correctly.

The president laid down his latest lines of attack against the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III even as the White House was trying to mark Trump’s 500th day in office by focusing on what it sees as his substantive achievements to date. As has often been the case, the president distracted from the message, given his own focus on the investigation of his 2016 campaign’s possible complicity with Russia’s election interference and whether he has sought to obstruct the probe.

Trump’s new attack on the constitutionality of the special counsel was particularly puzzling, coming more than a year after Mueller, a former FBI director, was named to the job and chosen by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, a Trump appointee.

The president’s claim that he has unfettered power to pardon himself was a response to the controversy stirred up by a weekend report in The New York Times. It said that two of Trump’s lawyers in January wrote a letter to Mueller arguing that the president’s powers are so broad as to make it impossible for him to have obstructed justice.

Many legal experts subsequently challenged that assertion, as well as the idea that Trump can pardon himself – contrary to the president’s subsequent tweet that ‘‘numerous legal scholars’’ attest to his absolute power.

At yesterday’s White House briefing, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders brushed past the questions on the president’s claims about his pardon powers.

‘‘Thankfully, the president hasn’t done anything wrong and wouldn’t have any need for a pardon,’’ she said. – TNS