In defence, Trump seeks to redefine meaning of obstruction

Meanwhile, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, revealed through his attorney that he has turned to a prominent defence lawyer, Abbe Lowell, to represent him in Russia-related investigations.

Kushner’s attorney, Jamie Gorelick, said in a statement that Kushner sought independent advice on whether to stay with her law firm, WilmerHale, after the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel in the investigation into possible co-ordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Mueller left the firm to take the special counsel position and took several colleagues with him. The firm’s lawyers also represent former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Lowell won the acquittal of former Sen. John Edwards in a campaign finance prosecution in North Carolina and currently represents New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez in a corruption case that’s pending trial.

As president, Trump has frequently disparaged the Russia probe as a “witch hunt” promoted by Democrats. Monday’s tweets appeared aimed at delegitimizing some of the allegations frequently hurled at him by his political opponents.

He tweeted that after months of reviewing Russia “under a magnifying glass, they have zero ‘tapes’ of T people colluding. There is no collusion & no obstruction. I should be given apology!”

During his presidential campaign, Trump frequently sought to muddy some of the criticism raised by his opponents. When rival Clinton argued he was unfit to hold office, Trump pointed to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign assertions that Clinton lacked judgment. When Trump faced scrutiny over his vulgar comments in a 2005 video, he sought to revive allegations of sexual impropriety against former President Bill Clinton.

Wayne Fields, a Washington University professor who has studied political rhetoric, said Trump appeared to be co-opting terms like collusion and obstruction as part of a larger strategy to “invalidate” some of the arguments made against him.

“You take words and you do everything you can to make them meaningless. You take any kind of precision out of public discourse so it can’t be used against you,” Fields said.

Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who has written about public corruption, said Trump appeared to be taking the term “obstruction,” which means impeding an investigation, and applying it to a decision by his predecessor not to pursue an investigation as vigorously as possible.

“Inaction is not an obstruction, but of course it has some potency as a political attack,” Henning said.

Asked about the comments, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters there were “some serious questions” about what the Obama administration “did or did not do in terms of acting” after evidence of Russian meddling surfaced during the campaign.

“Obviously I don’t have all the understanding of what they knew or when they knew it, but there does seem to be a bit of hypocrisy in terms of what they didn’t clearly do if they truly believe all of this was happening,” Spicer said. He insisted, “If they did know all this, then they clearly do know that there wasn’t a collusion.”

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

On Twitter follow Ken Thomas at https://twitter.com/KThomasDC

Ken Thomas, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

In defence, Trump seeks to redefine meaning of obstruction

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