Trump Lawyers Reportedly Want 2nd Special Counsel

To investigate Robert Mueller's investigation, reports Axios
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 12, 2017 9:30 AM CST
Report: Trump's Legal Team Wants 2nd Special Counsel
Robert Mueller in a file photo.   (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

There's plenty of speculation in DC about whether President Trump might fire special counsel Robert Mueller. But Mike Allen of Axios reports on another strategy being explored by the president's legal team: Appoint a second special counsel to investigate Mueller's investigation. The story suggests that Trump's attorneys trust Mueller himself but not others in the Justice Department. For example, they point to a Fox News story Monday detailing how the wife of a Justice Department official named Bruce Ohr worked for the company behind the infamous anti-Trump dossier that emerged during the election. Ohr was recently demoted for concealing his own meetings with the company, Fusion GPS.

"The Department of Justice and FBI cannot ignore the multiple problems that have been created by these obvious conflicts of interests," Trump attorney Jay Sekulow tells Axios.
"These new revelations require the appointment of a special counsel to investigate." It's not clear how likely this is to happen, but Attorney General Jeff Sessions has previously floated the idea of a second special counsel to cover a wide range of GOP concerns. Meanwhile, the Washington Post has a profile of Trump's legal trio: Sekulow (the TV presence), Ty Cobb (a White House attorney), and John Dowd (Trump's personal attorney). They "serve not only as Trump's lawyers but also as his strategists, publicists, therapists—and, based on Dowd's claim that he wrote a controversial presidential tweet, ghostwriters," per the Post. (More President Trump stories.)

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