Reports of President Trump being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller for obstruction of justice appear to have been exaggerated. Or just plain false. According to Jay Sekulow, a member of the president’s legal team, Trump “is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction.”
The claim that Trump is under investigation for obstruction of justice for allegedly telling former FBI director Comey, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go” stemmed from reports by the Washington Post and NBC News. Those reports — based on information from unnamed sources — were soundly and unambiguously refuted by Sekulow Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press when he said, “Let me be clear here. The president is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction.”
Answering a question about why “if he’s innocent” President Trump “is afraid of this investigation,” Sekulow responded, “He’s not afraid of the investigation. There is no investigation. I want to be clear here.” Sekulow went on to say, “There is not an investigation of the President of the United States. Period.”
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This of course, introduces the question about Trump’s Tweets on May 15 that seemed to indicate that he is being investigated. Those Tweets read:
They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice.
And:
You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history — led by some very bad and conflicted people!
#MAGA
Do Trump’s tweets admit what Sekulow is denying — that Trump is under investigation? No. They actually don’t.
Sekulow addressed that, too, saying:
Because every day, the Washington Post and the New York Times are utilizing supposed leaked information about supposed investigations of the President of the United States. So, his legal team — and the president — responds. But when you see a tweet — O.K.? — or a utilization of social media, the president has — I mean — his social media reach is over a hundred million — a little bit more than are watching us today — I mean I know you have good ratings, but — he reaches a lot of people.
So that tweet takes, let’s say fifteen seconds. This is not taking up the President of the United States’ day. So he’s responding to what he’s seeing in the media in a way in which he thinks is appropriate to talk to those people who put him in office.
He also said, “The tweet from the president was in response to the five anonymous sources purportedly leaking information to the Washington Post.”
So it appears that the president’s mention of the “witch hunt” and the “ very bad and conflicted people” leading it were references to the media — in particular the Times and the Post — and their “anonymous” and “unnamed” sources spreading false stories about investigations that don’t exist.
Sekulow went on to say that he is certain that the president is not the subject of Mueller’s investigation because neither the president nor anyone from his team has been notified by the special counsel’s office, though he did admit on Fox News that no one from the special prosecutor’s staff has affirmed that fact, only that it could be inferred from a lack of contact.
Sekulow’s explanation not only fits the facts, it passes the smell test. Reading back over Trump’s Tweets, it appears the only thing he admitted was that he is the victim of a witch hunt — which any honest observer already knew. The worst the president can be accused of in this is a lack of clear communication in a platform that limits his verbosity to 140 characters. He is certainly not the first to have a Tweet misunderstood.
Of course, if President Trump is going to continue to use Twitter to reach his social media audience of “over a hundred million” to dispel the myths coming out of this witch hunt — or any other false reports coming out of the liberal mainstream media — it would probably serve his interests to learn to Tweet more clearly. Because while it is clear in retrospect that he never actually Tweeted that he was under investigation, it sure looked that way against the backdrop of fake news reports.
Photo of Jay Sekulow: Gage Skidmore
