Amid the ever-growing Russia scandal, Donald Trump has hired a new lawyer, Jay Sekulow, and things are not going well for him early on.
Sekulow was a bizarre pick for the role from the very beginning. He is a former Fox News pundit with a wacky background, including a history of religious extremism as a “Jew for Jesus” who has personally worked with a right wing group to provide legal aid to abortion clinic protestors and to establish laws in Africa criminalizing homosexuality.
It’s been widely reported that Trump was turned down by four of DC’s most prestigious law firms after reaching out to them for additional legal counsel. According to Yahoo News, one lawyer working for one of these firms said the reason Trump was rejected was because “The guy won’t pay and he won’t listen.”
Turned down by all of DC’s most qualified legal minds because of his toxic, self-destructive behavior, Trump was forced to turn to the one place he perhaps knows best, Fox News. Why would Trump hire a far-right wing first amendment attorney for his criminal defense? Same reason he does most things; he saw it on Fox.
Following the Washington Post’s bombshell report citing five sources who claim Donald Trump is personally being investigated for obstruction of justice by special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump took to Twitter in the middle of the night and seemingly confirmed the report that he was being investigated.
This weekend, Sekulow went around on all the Sunday morning shows and told everyone to ignore what Trump had said about being under investigation. His attempt at saving face for the president did not go well, and things quickly got really bizarre and really incoherent.
On Chris Wallace’s Fox show, Sekulow became completely unhinged. In the span of just moments, Sekulow said that Trump was under investigation, was not under investigation, and wasn’t sure if he was under investigation or not.
It was a total implosion. This is exactly why nobody wants to be Trump’s lawyer. Keeping him on message is hopeless. His tweets are almost impossible to explain or justify. He’s a total nightmare client for any lawyer. It’s obvious why Trump has to resort to a lawyer like Sekulow, and this is the result he gets.