Marcus: Trump lawyer turns up the spin on Russia investigation

The better question is: What is this man shouting? Because if you turn down the volume and pay attention to Sekulow’s words, you can deduce the disturbing outlines of where the president’s legal team may be heading. He signaled the expansion of the Trump team’s assault on former FBI Director James Comey and, in turn, on the legitimacy of special counsel Robert Mueller. This is worrisome, because it lays the foundation for firing Mueller and/or issuing pardons and declaring, “Case closed.”

Thus, when Wallace asked Sekulow whether the Trump team’s repeated denials of dealings with Russia were now “suspect,” it triggered this disquisition:

“I think it’s important to put the framework here. How did we end up with a special counsel? … Comey had a series of meetings with the president of the United States. In those meetings, he took notes. He put them on his government computer, put them in his government desk, and when he was terminated from (that) position, which you would acknowledge that the president had the authority to do, he gave them to a friend of his to leak to the press … to get a special counsel.”

In this retelling, Mueller is the fruit of the poisonous tree planted by Comey. Therefore, Mueller’s appointment is illegitimate.

“I think that raises very serious legal issues as to the scope and nature of what really can take place,” Sekulow told NBC’s Chuck Todd.

Does it? In his previous round of Sunday shows, Sekulow muddied the waters by claiming that Comey had violated attorney-client privilege in revealing his conversations with Trump. As Wallace explained, this is incoherent, since Comey was not acting as Trump’s lawyer.

A loud, bogus argument

Sekulow’s pivot to executive privilege is scarcely more convincing. Perhaps Trump could have asserted privilege to bar Comey from testifying before Congress, especially before the firing. That’s different from claiming that Comey’s decision as a private citizen to reveal information about his conversations with the president was “illegal.” If such disclosures were against the law, every administration veteran who wrote a tell-all book would be in jail.

Another strand of Sekulow’s argument says the memo was government property, even if the information contained in it is unclassified. Irony alert: This requires concluding that Comey took something of value from the U.S. government, while asserting that the Trump campaign did not solicit anything of value from the Russian government.

Comey’s alleged crime wouldn’t make Mueller’s appointment void or voidable. A leak of classified information that is intended to trigger a criminal investigation doesn’t make the ensuing investigation improper.

But watch that space. I suspect — and fear — that we haven’t heard the last of this bogus argument.