President Donald Trump's personal lawyer said Sunday he agrees that special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe is a "witch hunt," citing fired FBI Director James Comey's "potential conflicts of interest."
In an interview on ABC News' "This Week," Jay Sekulow was pressed about Trump's repeated assertion the investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia is a "witch hunt," and whether that pertains to the Mueller probe too.
"Yeah, look how it started," he said.
"[Trump] talks about the scope and nature of the investigation, he's concerned about the nature of what is going on here," Sekulow said.
"There are a whole host of issues that has, as lawyers, we deal with in cases like that — potential confllicts of interest. How would James Comey be a witness when he has this relationship not just with the special counsel, but in the way he testified? James Comey said three times under oath that he acknowledged to the president that he wasn't under investigation."
He also pointed to how the Mueller probe began.
"James Comey takes notes of a conversation or a series of conversations he has with the president of the United States… he puts them on a government computer in his government vehicle, put them in his government desk. He gets fired by the president of the United States. …which James Comey acknowledged the president had the right to do.
"James Comey then leaks those documents to a friend of his for the sole purpose of leaking them to The New York Times and … said under oath he hoped to get a special counsel. The special counsel is based on evidence that was illegally leaked."
He also said there's no indication Trump will be called to testify under oath, but said the president already has said he would if called.
Separately, in an interview with NBC News' "Meet The Press," Sekulow also said the president wasn't involved in his eldest son's statement about an email exchange setting up a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer whom he believed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
And he said there was no attempt at a "cover-up."
"The president was not involved in that decision," he said. "I was not involved in that decision. Our lawyers were not involved in that decision."
"There's nothing illegal about that meeting," he added. "'Cover-up' is a big word to use but there was nothing illegal to cover up. With regard to how the information came out, as I said, that was information that was controlled not by my client, not by the president, it was controlled by Donald Trump Jr. And they made a decision on how to release that out."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.