[van id=”politics/2018/03/19/joseph-digenova-trump-new-lawyer-nr-zeleny-sot.cnn”]
By Gloria Borger and Jeremy Diamond
CNN
President Donald Trump will hire an attorney to join his personal legal team who has alleged the President is being framed by a group of FBI and Justice Department officials, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
The longtime Washington attorney, Joseph diGenova, is expected to join the President’s legal team at a time when Trump is taking a more aggressive approach to publicly dealing with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, lobbing a series of attacks against Mueller on Twitter over the weekend.
The New York Times first reported on diGenova’s hiring.
DiGenova declined to comment when reached by CNN.
“Former US Attorney for the District of Columbia Joe DiGenova will be joining our legal team later this week. I have worked with Joe for many years and have full confidence that he will be a great asset in our representation of the President,” Jay Sekulow, counsel to the President, told CNN.
A source familiar with the plans said diGenova will join the legal team, in part, to engage with the media and actively defend the President.
The President’s plans to hire diGenova come two months after diGenova appeared on Fox News to allege that FBI and Justice Department officials carried out “a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton and, if she didn’t win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime.”
“Everything we have seen from these texts, and from all the facts developing, shows that the FBI and senior DOJ officials conspired to violate the law, and deny Donald Trump his civil rights,” diGenova said at the time, pointing to controversial text messages between two FBI officials that came to light.
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