Back in June, Donald Trump was still treating the Russia investigation like some sort of defamation suit, one of a countless number of lawsuits that Trump has been involved in over the years. The first attorney he retained to lead his legal team, Marc Kasowitz, was his longtime personal lawyer from his New York real-estate days, and he responded as if former F.B.I. director James Comey’s sworn Senate testimony was just another meritless claim he could dismiss with a cease-and-desist letter. “Comey’s excuse for this unauthorized disclosure of privileged information . . . appears to be entirely retaliatory,” Kasowitz said in a statement at the time, reflexively going on the offensive. “We will leave it [to] the appropriate authorities to determine whether this leaks [sic] should be investigated along with all those others being investigated.”
Two
months later, the Russia probe looks much more serious—and Trump’s
lawyers appear to be treading much more carefully. Kasowitz, who was
busted sending an unhinged e-mail sent to a total stranger (“I’m on you now. You are fucking with me now. Let’s see who you are. Watch your back, bitch.”) has stepped down, and Ty Cobb, a mustachioed Washington super-lawyer, has taken over. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury, and Jay Sekulow, who occupies the role of Trump’s “TV lawyer,” defending the president on news shows, has apparently tempered his rhetoric.
The
reboot appears to be happening on several levels as Trump’s team work
to prevent any additional attacks on Mueller, Comey, or other people
central to the investigation, that might be perceived as attempts to
obstruct the Russia probe. While Trump has accused Mueller of conducting
a “witch hunt,” Cobb notably told Politico in a recent interview
that he had “a very respectful and professional relationship with Bob
Mueller [and] I think very highly of him.” He also promised that he
would attempt the impossible and unite the scattershot efforts of
Trump’s communications strategy. “I’ll certainly provide background
willingly when appropriate, but will work primarily with the comms staff
and try to make sure the message is accurate and not confusing and let
them run with those kind of things,” he said.
Though the communications team has yet to become organized, and the president continues to put himself in jeopardy with his ever-shifting explanations, Trump’s legal team has become more disciplined. As Axios reported
on Monday, the messaging seems to have shifted from furiously denying
all wrongdoing to the “more sustainable position that the President did
nothing wrong,” as well as dialing back attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sekulow, formerly one of the more vocal members of the legal team, told Axios that the shift isn’t a “message change,” per se,
but rather an acknowledgement of the current situation: “It’s just as
issues develop, we respond to them within the context of what you can
discuss and what you can’t. As an issue comes up, you examine that in
the context of an overall inquiry.”
The
retreat, such as it is, also reflects a daunting political reality for
Trump’s team: Despite their best efforts, they’re dealing with a client
who is almost pathologically incapable of telling the same story twice.
When he fired Comey, Trump made his situation worse by offering a
constantly evolving set of justifications for his dismissal. A similar
problem arose when Sekulow went from claiming that Trump played no role
in crafting Donald Trump Jr.’s misleading statement
about his infamous meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower last
year, to the White House claiming that Trump helped “as any father
would.” Now, as Mueller’s probe expands, Trump’s advisers will be at
pains to avoid putting the presidency in further legal jeopardy. It
would probably help if the commander-in-chief would stop tweeting.
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