President Donald Trump’s outside legal team is acknowledging that it pressed pause on stated plans to file a complaint against former FBI director James Comey for allegedly sharing the content of “privileged conversations” with the press.
“The filings will go forward at the appropriate time in the future,” a person with knowledge of the legal team’s plans told TPM on Wednesday. “For now, they will be postponed to allow the Special Counsel to do his work.”
This effort to smooth over relations with Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian officials, was first reported by Bloomberg.
It follows weeks of backlash from Trump and his allies against both Mueller and Comey, who testified before Congress that he kept detailed memos of private conversations he had with the President that he found troubling. Comey asked a friend to share descriptions of those memos with the media out of concern Trump would misrepresent their interactions—a decision that Trump and his private attorney, Mark Kasowitz, said proved Comey was a “leaker.”
The day after Comey’s testimony, Trump’s team publicized plans to file a complaint with the Justice Department about his actions. Legal observers said it was unlikely that Comey sharing unclassified information with the media as a private citizen qualified as leaking.
Trump and his defenders also blasted Mueller for his friendship with Comey, and the fact that several of the high-powered attorneys he brought onto his special counsel team had donated to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
For the moment, per the individual close to Trump’s legal team, the President is taking a step back. As TPM previously reported, his outside lawyers kicked the bucket for almost two weeks after initially announcing that they intended to lodge a complaint against Comey, until conceding Wednesday that it actually would not be filed any time in the near future.
This month, Trump’s outside legal team has expanded to include Jay Sekulow, an attorney who made his name fighting for conservative Christian causes; John Dowd, a former prosecutor well-known in Washington, D.C. legal circles; and Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the group who has represented big names like former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove.
Low energy. Sad!
Nobody told them there would be actual legal knowledge required.
what could possibly go wrong? please proceed.
And I’m still waiting for those detectives to return from Hawaii with Obama’s “real” birth certificate. Add one more item to the list of what I expect to happen when Hell freezes over.
Kudos to Kasowitz for his amazing Claude Rains pastiche.
He really nails that “Sen. Joseph Paine” look.