The special counsel has won some early court victories in the Russia investigation, but with charges filed defense attorneys and others are lining up to rein in the probe.
.. “Whenever you operate in uncharted legal territory, and this would be an example, you’d expect defense lawyers to push the envelope and edges.. In a case like Manafort’s, Mueller may be wise to hand it over to DOJ for prosecution.. But Rotunda also said a court is unlikely to give a defendant standing to object to Mueller’s jurisdiction. “The only entity that could object is the DOJ,” he said... U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has proposed should go to trial starting May 7.. Jackson also told the attorneys for Mueller and the defense that she’s considering issuing a gag order that limits the public statements both sides may make about the case... Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled last month in the special counsel’s favor when he tried to seek grand jury testimony from an attorney for Manafort and Gates... Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor, said that he expected defense lawyers representing indicted defendants to keep on challenging Mueller’s authority and jurisdiction. “I would also expect such challenges to be unavailing,” he said, “as Mueller’s authority to act is on firm legal ground.”
President Trump Dictated Don Jr.’s Misleading Statement on His Russia Meeting: Report
There isn’t really a good way to tell the world that you took a meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer after being promised dirt on Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” But Donald Trump Jr. made the revelation that he met with attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya during the campaign even worse when he offered two contradictory explanations in a 24-hour period.
.. This is what he came up with:
It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.
I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.
.. That explanation would be contradicted and expanded multiple times (eventually it was reported that eight people were in the meeting). And if the Post report is correct, President Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, lied to the press on more than one occasion. He said on Meet the Press, “I do want to be clear — that the president was not involved in the drafting of the statement and did not issue the statement.”
.. “The thing that really strikes me about this is the stupidity of involving the president,” said Peter Zeidenberg, the deputy special prosecutor who probed the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity. “They are still treating this like a family-run business and they have a PR problem … What they don’t seem to understand is this is a criminal investigation involving all of them.”
Trump’s Lawyers Sound Like They’re Getting Nervous
As Mueller’s probe expands, the president’s legal team is treading carefully... Back in June, Donald Trump was still treating the Russia investigation like some sort of defamation suit, one of a countless number of lawsuits that Trump has been involved in over the years. The first attorney he retained to lead his legal team, Marc Kasowitz, was his longtime personal lawyer from his New York real-estate days, and he responded as if former F.B.I. director James Comey’s sworn Senate testimony was just another meritless claim he could dismiss with a cease-and-desist letter. “Comey’s excuse for this unauthorized disclosure of privileged information . . . appears to be entirely retaliatory,” Kasowitz said in a statement at the time, reflexively going on the offensive. “We will leave it [to] the appropriate authorities to determine whether this leaks [sic] should be investigated along with all those others being investigated.”.. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury, and Jay Sekulow, who occupies the role of Trump’s “TV lawyer,” defending the president on news shows, has apparently tempered his rhetoric... Despite their best efforts, they’re dealing with a client who is almost pathologically incapable of telling the same story twice. When he fired Comey, Trump made his situation worse by offering a constantly evolving set of justifications for his dismissal... A similar problem arose when Sekulow went from claiming that Trump played no role in crafting Donald Trump Jr.’s misleading statement about his infamous meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower last year, to the White House claiming that Trump helped “as any father would.”
Trump’s lawyer insists nothing ‘nefarious’ in Trump Jr. Russia meeting
A senior member of President Trump’s personal legal team said Sunday that there was nothing improper in the meeting that Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son, took with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.
“Well, I wonder why the Secret Service, if this was nefarious, why the Secret Service allowed these people in,” Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for the president, said on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.” “The president had Secret Service protection at that point, and that raised a question with me.”
It’s highly unlikely that the Secret Service, which is charged with protecting the president, his aides and his family from physical harm, would have any influence over who the president or his children chose to meet during a presidential campaign.
A Secret Service spokeswoman cast doubt on Sekulow’s claims.
“Donald Trump Jr. was not under Secret Service protection in June 2016,”
.. Initially, Trump Jr. said the meeting focused on Russia’s moves to halt adoptions by American families, but he changed his story after new details emerged.
.. Sekulow is part of a legal team headed by New York attorney Marc E. Kasowitz, and the White House said last week that Trump was adding veteran Washington lawyer Ty Cobb
.. “Here is the reality: The meeting in and of itself, of course, as I’ve said before, is not a violation of the law,” Sekulow said on “This Week.” He added that “the president was not aware of the meeting and did not participate in it.”