Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the swamp water:
President Trump has decided not to hire two lawyers who were announced last week as new additions to his legal team, leaving him with a shrinking stable of lawyers as the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, enters an intense phase.
“The president is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining the president’s special counsel legal team,” Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said in a statement on Sunday morning. “However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters. The president looks forward to working with them.”
The upheaval on the legal team comes at a critical time for Mr. Trump. The president’s former lead lawyer, John Dowd, quit the team on Thursday, just as Mr. Trump is deciding whether to sit with Mr. Mueller for an interview. At the moment, Mr. Sekulow is the president’s chief outside lawyer, as Mr. Trump’s longtime New York lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz, remains on the periphery.
There’s obviously a lot more to this than meets the eye, as both diGenova and Toensing are veteran Washington infighters with a detailed cemetery map. Meanwhile, this sham investigation, which is little more than litigating the suitability of the 2016 election because Hillary Clinton lost, continues apace:
While Mr. Trump’s lawyers, including Mr. Dowd, had told the president that the investigation would be over by this point, it seems to be accelerating, as Mr. Mueller appears to be looking into a wide range of matters related to Mr. Trump’s corporate activities, his 2016 campaign, his associates and his time in office.
The president met with Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing, who are married, in recent days to discuss the possibility that they would join his legal team in the Mueller case. According to two people told of details about the meeting, the president did not believe he had personal chemistry with Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing.
The fact is, the Mueller investigation won’t be over until the Grand Inquisitor says it’s over, which will effectively be until just before the fall mid-terms, an impeachment referral, or never, whichever is more beneficial to the Democrats. Meanwhile:
The news about the canceled legal appointments came as White House officials were girding themselves for an interview on Sunday evening on the CBS program “60 Minutes” with the porn star known as Stormy Daniels. Ms. Daniels claims to have had a sexual relationship with Mr. Trump, and she signed a nondisclosure agreement with one of his lawyers, Michael D. Cohen, during the 2016 campaign.
They never stop, they never sleep, they never quit.
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