Trump’s legal plan: Fight, fight, fight
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, whose combative instincts are to lash out and never retreat, appears to be shaping a legal team in his own image. His clear directive: Fight, fight, fight.
In aggressively worded statements and confrontational TV appearances, Trump’s personal lawyers and newly hired proxies have shown themselves more than ready to defend him in the manner to which he is accustomed — with arguments seemingly aimed at public opinion as much as at warding off any actual legal threat from prosecutors.
The legal team, like the president, has come out ready to hit hard, even if not always quite accurately.
“The president has not been and is not under investigation,” lawyer Jay Sekulow has declared repeatedly the past few days, only to add to the statement Monday that he didn’t know for certain if that was true. “The legal team has not been notified,” he said on CNN.
The Trump team’s style makes for a study in contrasts when compared to the seasoned group of prosecutors and criminal law experts working under Robert Mueller, the tight-lipped, respected ex-FBI director. To make it even more difficult, their client’s public statements often threaten to undercut their work.
“I don’t care who Trump hires. There’s no reason to think he’s going to listen to legal advice,” said Washington defense lawyer Peter Zeidenberg. “Good luck trying to represent him.”
It’s too early to say for sure what legal strategy his team will settle on, especially since the full contours of the probe aren’t known and no public allegations have been leveled by investigators.
Whether Trump himself is under investigation at this stage also is still unclear. On Friday, he seemed to confirm news reports that he was, tweeting, “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt.” Pressed by TV interviewers, Sekulow declared that Trump was not being investigated, then tried to walk that back, saying there had been no such notification.