A member of Donald Trump’s legal team has denied the president’s own assertion that he is under investigation for obstruction of justice. Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, appeared across the major political talk shows on Sunday. Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, he said: “The fact of the matter is the president has not been and is not under investigation.” On NBC’s Meet the Press, he said: “He’s not afraid of the investigation – there is no investigation. There is not an investigation of the president of the United States, period.”

Sekulow’s comments directly contradicted Trump’s own tweet this week, in which he appeared to refer to deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein when he wrote: “I’m being investigated for firing the FBI director by the man who told me to fire the FBI director. Witch hunt!” Sekulow sought to brush aside the president’s words. Trump, he said, was merely responding to an anonymously sourced Washington Post report that said special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into links between Trump aides and Russia had expanded to look at Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey.

Sekulow added: “The president issued that tweet on social media because of the report in the Washington Post from five anonymous sources none of which, of course, anyone knows about, alleging that the president was under investigation in this purported expanded probe.(guardian)…[+]