Select Committee on January 6th Seeks Testimony From Senior Fox News Trump Flunky Sean Hannity

The House Select Committee investigating Donald Trump’s role in the deadly January 6th insurrection in Washington, D.C. has confirmed reports that it has asked Sean Hannity to voluntarily come before the Committee and reveal what he knows about Trump’s behavior leading up to, and during, the Capitol riots.

Donald Trump Sean Hannity

There is already abundant evidence of Trump’s flagrant dereliction of duty as he spent three hours watching the his StormTrumpers invading Congress before he took any action to stop it. And even then he only delivered a gushing outpouring of love for the violent, criminal, seditionists.

It was revealed last month that several Fox News hosts had emailed Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, begging him to get Trump to call off his rabid disciples as they were breaking doors and windows, beating police officers, and threatening the lives of members of Congress. Hannity was one of those emailing Meadows, imploring “Can he make a statement, ask people to leave the Capitol?” However, according to Zoe Lofgren, a member of the Committee, there is more where that comes from:

“He is a fact witness. We have in our possession dozens of texts that [Hannity] sent to Mark Meadows and others in his role as an apparent political operative. Indications of his communication with the president and others on strategy. And it’s that that we would like to talk to him about.

“I want to make sure that everyone knows that this isn’t a subpoena. We’ve asked him to cooperate with us as a fact witness out of his sense of patriotism, and we hope that he will respond because we have so many of these texts and pieces of evidence indicating that he was outside of his role as a press person, acting as a political operative.”

Indeed, Hannity was far more than a Fox News host during the Trump occupation of the White House. He served Trump as an adviser, and even campaigned with him What’s more, Hannity’s response to the news that the Committee is requesting his appearance came from his attorney, Jay Sekulow, who has also represented Trump. Naturally, Sekulow jumped to an absurd conclusion that “any such request would raise serious constitutional issues including First Amendment concerns regarding freedom of the press.” Of course, that’s not remotely true considering that the request is for a voluntary appearance and doesn’t involve any of Hannity’s activities on Fox News.

We can expect that Hannity will decline this offer to discuss what he knows about Trump and the January 6th insurrection. And Lofgren’s appeal to Hannity’s “sense of patriotism” was a long shot at best. Hannity isn’t the least bit concerned about the welfare of the nation. He’s too concerned with sucking up to, and defending, Dear Leader Trump, and filling his own pockets with ill-gotten gain from Trump Grifting Enterprises. It remains to be seen if a subpoena will follow Hannity’s refusal to cooperate. Regardless, his complicity is irrefutable.

UPDATE: Trump has chickened out of holding his “news” conference. Presumably because he is too scared that he might be asked questions. So he’s going to unload the same bullpucky at his next cult rally where no one can challenge him:

“In light of the total bias and dishonesty of the January 6th Unselect Committee of Democrats, two failed Republicans, and the Fake News Media, I am canceling the January 6th Press Conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, and instead will discuss many of those important topics at my rally on January 15th, in Arizona.”

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Reality TV Law: Trump Recruits His Impeachment Defense Team from Fox News

Donald Trump famously boasted that he “knows all the best people.” It turns out that that’s only true if what he meant by “best” was the foremost crooks, liars, and bootlickers. His administration has witnessed a parade of moral slackers and incompetents. He has fired more of his own appointees than any president in history. These are people that he lauded as “brilliant” until their termination, when he castigated them as “idiots.”

Fox News, Impeach Trump

A troubling hallmark of the Trump White House has been its reliance on staffers that Trump plucked from Fox News. They include Larry Kudlow, K.T. McFarland, Ben Carson, Sebastian Gorka, Richard Grennell, Jonathan Wachtel, Heather Nauert, and more. The truth is that Trump doesn’t really know anybody with any experience or record of accomplishment. He’s a former reality TV game show host who does nothing but golf, tweet, and watch Fox News.

So it comes as no surprise that as his impeachment looms before him, he resorts to the only source for personnel he’s familiar with to recruit his legal team. That team is already led by a frequent Fox News talking head, Jay Sekulow. And now Trump has announced that he’s filling up the roster with more of the same flunkies he’s seen over and over again on Fox.

The new members of Trump’s impeachment defense team are Ken Starr, Alan Dershowitz, Robert Ray, and Pam Bondi. All of them have been regular fixtures on Fox News as the network strives to host only those who will shamelessly suck up to the President by unflinchingly defending him and ruthlessly maligning his critics. And it’s from these televised auditions that Trump selects his closest associates and most trusted allies. This is a president who only values appearances. It is more important to him that his advocates perform well on television than that they exhibit intelligence, integrity, or fealty to facts. So let’s take a closer look at the stuffed suits Trump has hired to defend him:

Ken Starr…
…is best known as the independent counsel who couldn’t find any wrongdoing on the part of Bill Clinton, so he settled for a smarmy, albeit consensual, sex scandal as the basis for impeachment. Starr himself was later fired from his post as the president of Baylor University amid allegations of sexual misconduct on the football team. And another item on his resume is having worked for Trump pal and pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein.

Alan Dershowitz…
…is remembered as a member of the O.J. Simpson defense team. Trump likely appreciates his ability to get acquittals for people who are obviously guilty. He also must appreciate Dershowitz’s slobbering displays of affection and total faith in Trump’s purity and innocence. Dershowitz also worked for Epstein. Is this a pattern forming?

Robert Ray…
…took over the independent counsel office when Ken Starr left. Other than his frequent Trump-fluffing appearances on Fox and Friends, he isn’t particularly well known for anything significant.

Pam Bondi…
…is the former Attorney General for the state of Florida. She was caught in a campaign finance scandal wherein she accepted an illegal $25,000 donation from a Trump charity and then promptly dropped a case against his bogus Trump University that was later found to be guilty of fraud.

So the reality TV presidency is now being extended to the legal team that he’s relying on to absolve him of the high crimes and misdemeanors that led to his impeachment. It’s not much more than a cast of made-for-TV characters who will be preaching to the cameras and viewers at home, rather than to the assembled “jurors” in the Senate chamber. From Trump’s perspective this might seem like a smart move since the majority Republicans in the Senate have pretty much already declared their intentions to acquit him regardless of the evidence.

However, the American people are not going to be as forgiving as Trump’s GOP sycophants in Washington. They already believe that Trump is guilty, and a majority support his impeachment and removal from office. So it isn’t likely that Trump will find success in the melodramatic soap opera stunts deployed by this team of Fox News litigators. Team trump may have the system rigged for an acquittal, but the voters are going to hear all the evidence and make their own judgment come November.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

REALLY? Trump Complains About ‘TV Lawyers’ While Clinging to His Own TV Lawyers

No one is ever going to mistake Donald Trump for someone who can construct coherent analyses of current events. He has enough trouble pronouncing words with more than two syllables. Any sentence he utters risks contradicting itself before he reaches the period. And that’s not even considering the sheer volume of lies that flow from his infantile rhetoric and hostile bombast.

Donald Trump TV Set

Far too often Trump manages to express himself in ways that generate exasperated groans from people who remember when presidents were intelligent and articulate. And Wednesday was one of those days. Following the congressional hearings on his impeachment, Trump held a press conference with President Erdogan of Turkey. Naturally, there would be questions about the hearings, so you might assume that he would be prepared. Instead, Trump demonstrated that his thoughts on this critical and historic subject have the depth of an abandoned bird bath (video below).

The first question went to the friendliest of Trump-fluffers, a reporter from the rightist propaganda outfit, One America News Network (OANN). Her profoundly probing question inquired as to how Trump felt about how the hearings went. Gee, can anyone guess his answer?

Trump dished out every typical talking point that has fueled his robo-defense for the past several months. He sarcastically asked her if she was referring to “the witch hunt.” Then he said that “I haven’t watched for one minute,” despite having tweeted more than thirty times about it (although that wasn’t his his record). In true wannabe dictator form, he called it “a sham and shouldn’t be allowed.” He falsely asserted that “The Whistleblower gave a lot of incorrect information.” Nevermind that it was corroborated by Trump himself, as well as his Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney. He insisted that “All they have to do is look very, very simply at the transcript,” which explicitly affirms his guilt.

But even after all of that, Trump still had it in him to astound with his flagrant hypocrisy. Earlier that morning, Trump lashed out at Daniel Goldman, the lawyer that Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee appointed to question the witnesses. He whined that “I see they’re using lawyers that are television lawyers. They took some guys off television. I’m not surprised to see it because Schiff can’t do his own questions.”

First of all, Goldman may have been a legal analyst for a while with MSNBC, but he was also an assistant U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York for 10 years. The GOP’s lawyer (I guess they can’t do their own questions either) was Steve Castor, whose work has been limited to the Republican staff on the House Oversight Committee for the past fourteen years. More to the point, though, Trump is unleashing a bizarre complaint considering what he said in his press avail with Erdogan:

“If you read the transcript, this was analyzed by great lawyers. This was analyzed by Gregg Jarrett. It was analyzed by Mark Levin. It was analyzed by everybody. They said the call that I made with the president of Ukraine was a perfect one.”

Jarrett and Levin are both Fox News “lawyers” whose jobs are to appear on television as dedicated Trump-fluffers. They do not do any legal work at all. In other words, they are “TV lawyers.” And they are the only lawyers Trump could cite when looking for affirmation of his allegedly “perfect” telephone skills. What’s more, his personal attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow, are frequent guests on Fox News. That’s where Trump saw them and subsequently hired them. So … more TV Lawyers. And all of them either working for, or closely affiliated with, Fox News.

As an aside, another pair of Fox News lawyers, the husband and wife team of Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, were briefly considered by Trump as additions to his personal legal team, but ultimately did not join up due to undisclosed “conflicts.” On Wednesday diGenova appeared on Fox News and made some of the most repulsive and bigoted remarks ever aired on Fox.

This is what you get when you elect a reality TV game show host with zero experience in government. Trump has no idea how to manage a large bureaucracy. And he doesn’t know any reputable attorneys other than those he sees on Fox News. The same goes for the secretaries in his Cabinet and the advisors on his White House staff. Trump is about as capable of putting together a competent team as your uncle in Alabama who watches Fox all day in his trailer park. And he’s even less aware of his own hypocrisies and ignorance.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The Fake Fox News Story About Seth Rich Was Planted By Russia and Promoted By Hannity

Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News has just published an extensive investigative report revealing that the bogus story about the murder of the Democratic National Committee staffer, Seth Rich, was originally planted by Russian intelligence. (Insert SHOCKED! face here). This was a completely fabricated piece of actual fake news that was prominently pushed by Fox News, and particularly Sean Hannity.

Fox News, Sean Hannity, Vladimir Putin

The article by Isikoff went into stark detail about the origins of the callous claims that Rich was actually the source of hacked emails the were published by Wikileaks. Those who told and spread these lies had no compassion whatsoever for the family that was grieving the loss of a loved one. Likewise, they didn’t care that they were disseminating falsehoods created by Russian spies intended to disrupt an American presidential election. Isikoff reported that

“The conspiracy claims reached their zenith in May 2017 — the same week as Mueller’s appointment as special counsel in the Russia probe — when Fox News’ website posted a sensational story claiming that an FBI forensic report had discovered evidence on Rich’s laptop that he had been in communication with WikiLeaks prior to his death. Sean Hannity, the network’s primetime star, treated the account as major news on his nightly broadcast, calling it ‘explosive’ and proclaiming it ‘might expose the single biggest fraud, lies, perpetrated on the American people by the media and the Democrats in our history.'”

“In fact, the Fox story was a ‘complete fabrication,’ said [U.S. attorney Deborah] Sines, who consulted with the FBI about the Fox News claims. There was ‘no connection between Seth and WikiLeaks. And there was no evidence on his work computer of him downloading and disseminating things from the DNC.'”

In an interview on MSNBC, Isikoff elaborated on what his investigation uncovered (video below):

“The timing is so interesting here. The week that this breaks on Fox News, in the story they later had to retract and acknowledged didn’t ‘meet their editorial standards,’ Sean Hannity is shouting it from the rooftops. What’s going on that week? It’s the week that [special counsel Robert] Mueller was appointed. It’s the week [FBI Director James] Comey was fired. It’s when the Russia story was blowing up.”

Isikoff noted that Hannity’s guest was Trump’s attorney for the Russia affair, Jay Sekulow. He had just been hired by Trump, but Hannity left that fact out of the segment. Together they were pushing the phony Rich story as a means to undercut the Russia narrative.

Fox News later issued a mushy retraction that admitted no fault. They said they would conduct an internal investigation to ascertain where they went wrong, but any findings from the alleged investigation remain undisclosed. However, Hannity never conceded any wrongdoing at all. To the contrary, he insisted that his “reporting” was accurate and would continue:

“I am not Fox.com or FoxNews.com, I retracted nothing. For those accusing me of pushing a conspiracy theory, you are the biggest phony hypocrites in the entire world. This issue, it’s so big now that the entire Russia collusion narrative is hanging by a thread. […] These are questions that I have a moral obligation to ask, and I will do the mainstream media’s job like I have most of my career.”

True to form, Hannity never did retract his lies about Rich. But he did delete all of his tweets about Rich (you can still see them here). He is exhibiting the same dishonesty, arrogance, and stubbornness as his bestie in the White House, Donald Trump. They both will cling to the most ludicrous assertions, even after they have been proven to be utterly false. The truth plays no part in their determined propaganda crusades. And neither does patriotism, as both Hannity and Trump have now been been shown to be willing confederates (aka “useful idiots”) of covert Russian operations.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Goebbels Would Be Proud: Trump’s Legal Team to Guest Host Sean Hannity’s Radio Show

For Donald Trump’s congregation of cult disciples, seeing his chief defenders on television everyday may not be enough to pacify them. They need to have a near constant flow of Trump-splaining to ease their diseased consciences and strengthen their confidence that their Dear Leader is actually innocent of the crimes he is so obviously guilty of.

Fox News Sean Hannity

Stepping up to provide the Deplorables with their dose of “Trump is a victim of the Deep State” propaganda is, not surprisingly, Sean Hannity of Fox News. Although he already hosts Trump’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow, on his Fox program so frequently you might have assumed they were members of the cast, he is now going a step further:

That’s right, Donald Trump’s actual attorneys will be taking over the Sean Hannity Trump-Fluffing Radio Extravaganza for the day, presumably while Hannity off at Mar-a-Lago polishing Trump’s – let’s say ring. This is an unheard of capitulation to a political leader who is under investigation by his own Justice Department for alleged conspiracy with Russia to interfere with an election, obstruction of justice, and other assorted financial corruption charges.

For the legal team of an embattled president to appear on a program like this nearly every day is bad enough. In fact, just a few days ago Hannity interviewed Giuliani in one of the most ludicrous displays of sycophancy ever broadcast on TV. But to be handed the entire program to spew their lie-riddled defense of a treasonous president blows up any facade of legal propriety or ethics.

By making Giuliani and Sekulow the guest hosts of his program, Hannity is demonstrating, once again, that he is utterly unfit to host a program on any TV network with the word “news” in its name. If Fox News were a legitimate news enterprise they would cancel Hannity immediately. Lucky for them, they have never been able to claim believably that they are legitimate by any stretch of the imagination.

The radio stations that broadcast this flagrant attempt to poison the jury pool need to know that they are complicit in an act of pure state-sponsored propaganda. It’s the sort of thing that Goebbels would have taken great pride in producing. It requires the audacity of a totalitarian dictator who has no fear that anyone will challenge his omnipotent authority. And, sadly, it is not an unexpected occurrence by one of this administration’s most loyal bootlickers.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Confesses Collusion with Russia While His Lawyer Jay Sekulow Lies About Trump Tower Meeting

On Sunday morning’s edition of This Week, George Stephanopoulos asked Donald Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow about his prior statements concerning the infamous meeting in Trump Tower. That was where Don Jr, Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and other Trump associates conspired with Russian operatives to acquire emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Donald Trump

As a refresher, what Sekulow said at the time was that the meeting was an innocent gathering to discuss adoption issues. He further said that Donald Trump knew nothing about it and had no role in the false explanations that were disseminated to the press.

Of course, we now know that Trump dictated those phony excuses. And we know it because Sekulow admitted it in a letter to special counsel Robert Mueller. What’s more, Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, is said to be ready to testify that Trump was aware of the meeting before they took place, and approved of it. At this point that’s almost academic since the evidence shows that Trump was talking about the ill-gotten fruits of the meeting in public in advance of it.

Remember, this was a meeting in his own building, with his son, his son-in-law, and his campaign manager, to discuss Russian dirt on his opponent, during his campaign. Gee, why would anyone think he knew anything about it? Nevertheless, that was the position of Sekulow and the whole Trump regime. But on This Week Sekulow said this (video below):

“I was in the case at that point a couple of weeks and there was a lot of information that was gathering, and as my colleague Rudy Giuliani said, I had bad information at that time. I made a mistake in my statement. I talked about that before. That happens when you have cases like this.”

Actually, that is most definitely not what happens in cases like this. In cases like this it is imperative that attorneys collect and disseminate only well researched and documented information. Anything less is a flagrant disservice to their client, as is evident by what’s going on now. But that isn’t the worst thing about Sekulow’s remarks.

The worst part is that the entire statement is riddled with lies. If Sekulow had “bad information” at the time, then why didn’t he correct the record after he was able to get good information. He had over a year to do that. He had access to the people who attended the meeting. Why didn’t he get statements from them to set the record straight? In fact, why didn’t they offer corrections themselves without being prodded by Sekulow? They knew what he said on TV and they knew is was false. Every one of them let the lies fester for a year. And, of course, Trump himself knew that what his lawyer said wasn’t true, but he didn’t bother to correct him either.

What’s more, you have to ask why Team Trump told so many lies about the meeting in the first place. If they all considered it to be innocent and legal there should be no reason to invent fictional scenarios that were sure to be uncovered eventually. That’s not the way innocent people behave. And they allowed those lies to gather mold for months, purposefully deceiving the American people as well as the investigating authorities.

And, for the first time, Trump himself has acknowledged that the subject of the Trump Tower meeting was to obtain dirt about Clinton from Russia. That’s a bombshell admission that also reveals that he lied when he told the press that it was about adoptions, and also when he dictated the lies that Don Jr told.

This tweet is confession that Trump colluded with Russia to get dirt on Clinton. It’s as simple as that. Furthermore, it isn’t legal and it isn’t done all the time. To the contrary, this has never been done, that anyone knows of. And it is strictly against the law to conspire with a foreign government to interfere with an election. It’s also illegal to accept cash, or anything of value (like stolen emails), without disclosing it in campaign finance reports.

Since we know that Trump and company have lied about whether there ever was a meeting with Russians, and then lied about the subject of the meeting, and then lied about the participants, and then lied about why they told the previous lies, then it’s a good bet that the lies Trump just told will also be exposed in short order. That being his claim that he didn’t know about the meeting. Anyone who believes that is terminally naive. It’s just a matter of time before the truth about this comes out, just like the truth about the meeting did. And when it does you can expect Trump start tweeting about illegal MS-13 immigrant children on a nationwide killing spree who refuse to stand for the national anthem.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Giuliani Says the Reason Trump Can’t Testify is Because He’s Either a Liar or a Mental Defective

Rudy Giuliani continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. Every time he appears on television he manages to dig his only client, Donald Trump, into a deeper, more vermin-infested swamp hole. If we didn’t know better, we might be inclined to believe that Giuliani is a part of the “Deep State” that is conspiring to destroy Trump and replace him with a Hillary Clinton lizard clone.

Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump

Sunday morning on ABC’s This Week, Giuliani was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos. Among the subjects discussed was the special counsel’s investigation into Trump’s collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice. Despite Trump’s repeated, panicky tweetstorms insisting that he’s innocent, this inquiry has already produced dozens of indictments and five guilty pleas. Trump’s painfully obvious consciousness of guilt was on display this week when he accused the Justice Department of leaking a letter to Robert Mueller that Trump or his lawyers most likely leaked themselves.

During the interview Giuliani was asked about the prospects of Trump being questioned by Mueller. For months the Trump team has been wavering on this matter with contradictory assertions that he would love to sit down with the special counsel or that he would foolish to do so. Stephanopoulos eventually asked specifically about the recent discovery that Trump’s lawyers outright lied about whether the President dictated Don, Jr.’s response to his meeting with Russians at Trump Tower. And Giuliani took that as cue to put Trump in a distinctly negative light (video below):

Stephanopoulos: It’s not a complicated thing. The President was there. He was dealing with the letter. First it was all denied. And now you’re saying he dictated it.
Giuliani: Jay [Sekolow] would have to answer that. I think Jay was wrong. This is the reason you don’t let the president testify. Our recollection keeps changing, or we’re not even asked a question and somebody makes an assumption.

Well, that clears things up. Giuliani is saying that Trump must not be allowed to testify because he is likely to commit perjury. Either that or he is too mentally impaired to remember critical details of his own behavior. But it’s even worse than having a poor memory. Giuliani is saying that Trump’s recollections of specific events might actually be different depending on when you ask him. That’s an admission that Trump is, in effect, unfit to hold office.

On an interesting side note, Giuliani didn’t say what he thought Sekulow was wrong about: His first statement that Trump had nothing to do with Don, Jr.’s response, or the one in the letter to Mueller saying that Trump dictated it. Either way, the fact that Giuliani also threw his colleague, Jay Sekulow, under the bus is just icing on the psychotic meltdown that Rudy was having on the air. So far Sekulow has not commented on Giuliani’s assertion that he was wrong about – something.

The bottom line here is that Giuliani is actually right. Trump is very likely to either lie or reveal his decaying grasp of reality if he testifies for Mueller. That’s obviously a dangerous course of action for the President. But more troubling is the fact that if Trump is too impaired to meet with Mueller, then he’s also too impaired to meet with Kim Jong Un, or Vladimir Putin, or even members of Congress. How can Republicans – or America – tolerate a president who, by his own attorney’s account, can’t consistently inhabit the real world?

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump’s Lawyer Repeatedly Contradicts President’s Claim that He’s Under Investigation

Donald Trump and his administration are not known for their ability to communicate a consistent, coherent message. They have a history of wildly contradictory statements and absurd deflections from reality. So it isn’t surprising that Trump’s new lawyer, Jay Sekulow, has continued that tradition. He made several appearances on the Sunday morning news shows that did nothing but contribute to the confusion surrounding the investigation into Trump’s obstruction of justice.

Sekulow Trump CNN

On all of these programs the discussion was related to a story in the Washington Post saying Trump is under investigation. The Post reported that on the basis of five (count ’em, five) sources who requested anonymity. Of course, Trump has previously railed against the use of anonymous sources despite using them himself when it suits him. However, professional journalists have relied on such sources with great accuracy for as long as there has been journalism.

Trump’s response to the story was expressed in a tweet that apparently confirmed the Post’s account:

That’s simple enough. The President is explicitly agreeing with the Post that he is being investigated. And the investigation concerns, in part, the events leading to the termination of former FBI Director, James Comey. He’s also blaming it on someone at the Justice Department who told him to do it. Never mind that he told NBC’s Lester Holt it was his decision alone. A decision that he made before consulting the DOJ. The bottom line is that everyone is on the same page with regard to the existence of an investigation. Right?

Wrong. Mr. Sekulow, Trump’s attorney, objects. On each of his Sunday interviews he blatantly contradicted his client. He repeated that the President is not now, nor has he ever been, under investigation. But his attempts to support that argument were ludicrous. Let’s begin with the most friendly forum for Trump’s representative, Fox News. Chris Wallace noted that Sekulow himself said that Trump is being investigated.

Sekulow: [Trump] is being investigated for taking the action that the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, recommended him to take by the agency that recommended the termination.
Wallace: First of all, you’ve now stated that he is being investigated after saying that he …
Sekulow: No.
Wallace: You just said that he’s being investigated.
Sekulow: Let me be crystal clear so you completely understand. We have not received, nor are we aware of any investigation of the President of the United States.

Wallace deserves some credit for not letting Sekulow get away with contradicting both himself and Trump. But Sekulow’s attempt at crystal clarity just dodges the substance of his own prior remarks. So let’s move on to Meet the Press with Chuck Todd:

Todd: Let me begin with getting some clarification here. The President tweeted this week “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director.” When did the President become aware that he was officially under investigation by the special counsel?
Sekulow: The President is not under investigation by the special counsel. The tweet from the President was in response to the five anonymous sources that were purportedly leaking information to the Washington Post about a potential investigation of the President.

Sekulow’s reply doesn’t begin to answer the question. In fact, it makes no sense. How does Trump’s alleged response being aimed at the Post’s story change the meaning of it? That question comes up again when Sekulow appears on CNN’s State of the Nation with Jake Tapper (video below):

Tapper: The President said “I am being investigated” in a tweet and people take his word on that. But you’re his attorney. You’re saying that when the President said that he was not accurate.
Sekulow: No. The President was – It was 141 (sic) characters. There’s a limitation on Twitter, as we all know. And the President has very effective utilization of social media. So here’s what we have. The President issued that tweet, that social media statement based on a fake report, a report with no documented sources from the Washington Post. […] The President’s response was as it related to the Washington Post report. He cannot in a Twitter statement include all of that in there. But the Washington Post statement came out that morning. There should be no confusion. The President is not under investigation.

Now Sekulow is asserting that the Post’s story is fake. Of course, he doesn’t provide any evidence to substantiate that allegation. As a lawyer he should know better. But even that reckless remark doesn’t explain why Trump said that he is being investigated. Sekulow tried to bolster his defense by asserting that Twitter’s character limit is what prevented Trump from being clear. But Trump’s tweet contained only 111 characters. So he had twenty-nine to spare. And according to Sekulow, “the President has very effective utilization of social media.” So he could easily have added “WaPo Says,” or even “the fake news WaPo says.” So there was no impediment by Twitter on Trump making an accurate statement.

At this point it should be noted that Sekulow is not telling the truth about whether Trump is under investigation. All he can say honestly is that he isn’t aware of any investigation. He cannot say that there isn’t one. Wallace called him that and he agreed. Nevertheless, he repeated the same falsehood on the other programs. It’s a propaganda tactic aimed at convincing people that Trump is pure as the driven snow. But his execution is so inept that he just winds up muddying the waters and making his client look guilty. Which I suppose is a professional hazard for lawyers with guilty clients.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.