President Donald Trump has requested a private lawyer to investigate a special prosecutor of alleged Russian insurgency in US elections and possible ties between Trump's campaign and Moscow, Fox Business Network reporter reported on Twitter. Kasowitz, a lawyer from New York who had already represented Trump, did not respond immediately to Reuters's request for comment.
The FBI and Congress are both conducting investigations
The Washington Post reported this week that Kasowitz was among the four prominent lawyers who talked to the White House and are mostly seen as finalists for Trump's private lawyer.
The other three attorneys were Robert Giuffra Jr., Reid Weingarten, and Theodore Olson, the Washingon Post reports. The post says they spoke about the issue under the terms of being named because they were not authorized to talk to the public. The attorney would be separated from the White House attorney's office, led by Donald McGahn, who was a lawyer for Trump's campaign.
The private lawyer will represent Trump in an investigation into alleged Russian ties led by former FBI director Robert Mueller, who was appointed by the Justice Ministry last week as a special prosecutor. A few congressional committees, as well as The Fbi, are also looking into this particular issue. US intelligence agencies said in January that Moscow sought to influence the presidential election in Trump's favor.
Russia denies its indignation, and Trump denies any ties with Russia.
Avoiding direct questions
The White House, responding to hearings at Congress on contacts between Donald Trump and Russia's presidential campaign officials, said there was no evidence of a meeting between the Trump team and Moscow. Testifying at the House of Representatives, former CIA director John Brennan said he knew about contacts between Russian officials and people involved in Trump's campaign and that he thinks Moscow wants to lure Americans into thinking of that "path of betrayal" but cannot say it really was a collusion.
Dan Coats, a national intelligence director, was questioned at a separate testimony by the Senate Committee. Coats avoided the question but said he had clearly told Trump's administration that any "political formatting" of intelligence activities would not be appropriate. He said there were no "documents related to it" when one senator asked him if he would send notes of conversations he might have had with Trump about the alleged Russian strike in the presidential election. In a statement to the journalist, the White House official said that "there is still no evidence of any kind of ties to the Russia-Trump campaign".
