Fight for witnesses hangs over final day of impeachment trial’s opening arguments
Outside counsel for President Trump, Jay Sekulow, is using the remaining time of the team’s opening arguments to blast former FBI director James Comey and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
He also listed a series of issues from Christopher Steele’s infamous dossier, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the an affair between two former FBI officials.
“Does it bother your sense of justice even a little bit — even a little bit — that Bob Mueller allowed the evidence on the phones of those agents to be wiped clean while there was an investigation going on by the inspector general?” Sekulow said, referencing the text messages sent between the FBI employees.
“Now, if you did it, if you did it, manager Schiff, if you did it, manager Jeffries, if I did that, destroyed evidence, if anyone in this chamber did this, we’d be in serious trouble. Their serious trouble is they get fired. Bob Mueller’s explanation for it is, I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what happened, I can’t recall the conversations. You can’t view this case in a vacuum,” Sekulow continued.
Sekulow also went after Comey, who was fired by President Trump.
“The President of the United States, before he was the President, was under an investigation. It was called Crossfire Hurricane. It was an investigation led by the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. James Comey eventually told the President a little about the investigation and referenced the Steele dossier. James Comey, the then-director of the FBI, said it was salacious and unverified. So salacious and unverified that they used it as a basis to obtain FISA warrants. Members, managers here, managers at this table right here, said that any discussions on the abuse from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, utilized to get the FISA warrants from the court, were conspiracy theories,» he said.
