The addition comes as Trump has started swinging more aggressively against Mueller and his team of prosecutors.
Former federal prosecutor Joseph diGenova will join President Donald Trump’s legal team later this week, adding to the president’s Russia response another bulldog lawyer who argued earlier this year that Trump had been framed by the Justice Department and FBI “with a falsely created crime.”
“I have worked with Joe for many years and have full confidence that he will be a great asset in our representation of the president,” said Jay Sekulow, another member of Trump’s personal legal team who confirmed the hiring on Monday.
The addition of diGenova doesn’t immediately change the legal hierarchy surrounding the president: John Dowd remains Trump’s top personal lawyer and is spearheading negotiations with special counsel Robert Mueller on a potential interview with the president. Sekulow has a key role doing public communications and legal research on key constitutional questions at the center of Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation into the president. Ty Cobb is still the White House lawyer managing the president’s official response to the Russia probe.
With diGenova, a veteran of Washington scandals, Trump adds another outspoken critic of the Russia probe who is likely to embolden a president who has recently started swinging even more aggressively in public against Mueller and his team of prosecutors. Trump this past weekend for the first time mentioned Mueller by name in a Twitter post critical of the investigation, and he returned to the issue again Monday, writing, “A total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!”
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Mueller’s probe has long been a source of agitation from diGenova. He’s argued Mueller has too many personal conflicts to run the investigation. Appearing on Fox News in January, he said the whole investigation had dubious beginnings.
“There was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton and, if she didn’t win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime,” he said, adding, “Make no mistake about it: A group of FBI and DOJ people were trying to frame Donald Trump of a falsely created crime.”
DiGenova has also been a public critic of former FBI Director James Comey, frequently calling him a “dirty cop” and suggesting in a January radio interview with WMAL that Comey “is ultimately going to be charged with a crime.”
In the same interview, diGenova also asserted that the first judge presiding over former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn’s guilty plea was “removed from the case” rather than recused. But no information has emerged to support that contention.
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- Discussion
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Trump hires Russia probe critic for his personal legal teamhttps://t.co/Esu1XyVYce pic.twitter.com/Aa9QGn41iZ
— POLITICO (@politico) March 19, 2018
The Failing New York Times purposely wrote a false story stating that I am unhappy with my legal team on the Russia case and am going to add another lawyer to help out. Wrong. I am VERY happy with my lawyers, John Dowd, Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow. They are doing a great job and…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2018
Wait you mean @maggieNYT was right and the president IS adding a new lawyer to his legal team????
It’s almost as if he regularly decries as “fake” or “false” stories that are 100% accurate that he just doesn’t like. https://t.co/2J4k6hV3Lh
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 19, 2018
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