A member of President Trump's legal team said that if special counsel Robert Mueller were to subpoena Trump to testify in the Russia investigation, it would spark a legal battle that would go to the Supreme Court
Lawyer Jay Sekulow told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on "This Week" Sunday that the president's legal team's inclination at this point is not to have the president meet with Mueller.
If Mueller were to try to compel the president's testimony, there would be a legal fight over the constitutionality of requiring such an act of a sitting president, Sekulow said.
“A subpoena for live testimony has never been tested in court as to the president of the United States,” Sekulow said.
Stephanopoulos also pressed Sekulow on contradictions with some of his past statements about the investigation, including in relation to the nature of a Trump Tower meeting in 2017 between members of the Trump campaign and Russians.
In a July 2017 appearance on "This Week," Sekulow denied that the President was involved in crafting his son Donald Trump Jr's statement about the meeting. The White House later admitted that President Trump had dictated the statement on his son's behalf.
When asked by Stephanopoulos, "why did you deny President Trump’s involvement? When did you learn that the denial wasn’t true?"
"I had bad information at that time and made a mistake in my statement," Sekulow said now that it has come to light that the President dictated his son’s statement. "Over time, facts develop."
In response to whether or not collusion constituted potential criminal activity, Stephanopoulos noted that collusion allegations could constitute multiple crimes, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and aiding and abetting conspiracy.
While denying any collusion between the Trump team and the Russians, Sekulow also denied that collusion would constitute a crime.
"The so-called collusion, which by the way is not a legal term, that’s now what results in a issue of criminality," Sekulow said. "When Rudy Giuliani said collusion’s not a crime, that was again rather unremarkable."
Sekulow also denied that the Trump Tower meeting, even if it were meant to get information on an opponent, was illegal.
"The question is, how would it be illegal,” Sekulow asked. "I mean, the real question here is, would a meeting of that nature constitute a violation -- the meeting itself constitute a violation of the law?"
Sekulow also denied that the President committed obstruction of justice by sending a Wednesday tweet in which he said in part, "This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further."
"Obstruction of justice by tweet is absurd. The president has the first amendment right to put his opinion out there," Sekulow said, while adding that most questions about obstruction of justice and the Special Counsel investigation are questions of the President’s powers under Article Two of the United States Constitution.
from ABC News: Politics https://ift.tt/2Ku3Psu
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