Lawyers for Donald Trump are beginning to make new levels of noise about bias in the Justice Department’s handling of a special counsel inquest into Russian interference with last year’s election.
And in order to right what they see as a listing ship, the president’s attorneys want a new special counsel – to investigate the existing one.
A Fox News Channel report established new facts Monday night about senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr who was demoted last week for concealing his contacts with the people responsible for compiling a salacious and unsubstantiated ‘dirty dossier’ on then-candidate Trump.
Ohr’s wife Nellie worked during the 2016 election season for Fusion GPS, the Democratic-funded opposition research firm that commissioned the dossier from a former British spy in order to boost the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
‘The Department of Justice and FBI cannot ignore the multiple problems that have been created by these obvious conflicts of interests,’ Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow told Axios, a news website.
‘These new revelations require the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate.’
President Donald Trump’s legal team is beginning to talk openly about the need for a spcial counsel to investigate the existing special counsel, Robert Mueller
Mueller is in charge of a wide-ranging investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference, but Republicans fear Hillary Clinton partisans on his staff and elsewhere in the Justice Department have stacked the deck against the president
This is a separate line of thinking from one suggesting that a new special counsel should probe Clinton for alleged conflicts of interest related to her family foundation.
Some Republicans want new light shed on international relationships the Clinton Foundation had between 2009 and 2013 in countries whose concerns were on then-Secretary of State Clinton’s desk.
Also in that stream of thought are accusations about the controversial sale of Uranium One and its mineral rights to the Russian government.
But the more recent calls for a new independent investigator are reflections of GOP panic following guilty pleas from two former Trump officials and pending charges facing two more.
Former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn and onetime Trump campaign foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos have both admitted they lied to the FBI about their pre-inauguration contacts with Russians.
Bruce Ohr (left) and Peter Strzok (right) are accused of hiding contacts and relationships that might have prejudiced them against President Trump
Mueller’s ‘pit bull’ investigator Andrew Weissman went to Hillary Clinton’s Election Day ‘victory’ party as a guest, it was reported Friday
Weissman also praised Sally Yates as Trump fired her for refusing to defend his travel ban order in court
And former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates are looking at the possibility of long prison stretches following indictments for money laundering and other financial crimes.
That’s left Trumpworld in a defensive posture, and plotting to deflect or disarm whatever might come next.
Their ammunition has come in the form of seemingly conflicted DOJ officials whom Trump loyalists see as ‘deep state’ holdovers from the Obama administration left behind to cause mischief.
Senior FBI official Peter Strzok, for instance, led the questioning of Mike Flynn – and of Hillary Clinton when she was grilled over low heat over her secret email server that was found to contain classified material.
A former George W. Bush press secretary summed up GOP sentiments on Friday
Questions still swirl around Hillary Clinton more than a year after she lost the presidency in shocking fashion to Trump
He is also the aide to James Comey who changed crucial wording in the later-fired FBI chief’s pronouncement that let Clinton off the hook as she ran for the White House.
Where Comey had originally pronounced her use of the server ‘grossly negligent,’ a finding that could have left her open to criminal prosecution, Strzok altered it to read ‘extremely careless.’
Strzok himself signed the document authorizing the so-called ‘Russiagate’ investigation in July 2016.
Mueller shoved him overboard a week ago after learning that he had sent anti-Trump text messages to his lover Lisa Page – who was also an FBI lawyer herself.
Strzok now works for FBI’s human resources department.
Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said last week on Twitter that the scope of ongoing special counsel investigations must be broadened
Separately, it was revealed Friday in a Wall Street Journal report that ‘pit bull’ investigator Andrew Weissman, a key lawyer on Mueller’s team, attended Clinton’s Election Night party in New York City.
Weissman was already the subject of Republican scorn after Judicial Watch, a right-leaning government transparency group, published an email he sent in January to then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates.
In the email, which was the product of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Weissman praised Yates for refusing to defend a multi-nation travel ban that Trump ordered during his first weeks as president.
Former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer tweeted that ‘[i]f it’s true that Andrew Weissmann attended Hillary’s victory party, this is getting out of hand.’
Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said last week on Twitter that the scope of ongoing special counsel investigations must be broadened.
‘I will be challenging Rs and Ds on Senate Judiciary Committee to support a Special Counsel to investigate ALL THINGS 2016 — not just Trump and Russia,’ he wrote.