President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Jay Sekulow alleged Friday on the Fox News Channel that the newly released whistleblower complaint was written by a law firm, not an individual.
The whistleblower complaint, released to the public Thursday, accused Trump of asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday that a formal impeachment inquiry against the president has begun.
Sekulow told the “Fox & Friends” co-hosts Friday morning that the complaint reads as though a law firm wrote it, not an individual. He brings up reasons to back up this allegation, which include looking at “the phraseology” and “the footnotes.”
“So, when you start with a witness saying, Steve and Brian, ‘I have no knowledge of the events I’m depicting here, and I’m basing this on conversations I had with colleagues of mine, and I think they are trustworthy,'” Sekulow said. “Well, do you know if they heard it correctly?”
“Well, I don’t know because I don’t have firsthand knowledge. And do you think the whistleblower drafted that complaint? I mean realistically?” (RELATED: Report: Whistleblower Was White House-Seconded CIA Agent)
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He continued to give examples of why the complaint “wasn’t drafted by this individual.”
“Look at the phraseology, the endnotes, and the footnotes,” Sekulow explained. “This wasn’t drafted by this individual. This was written by a law firm. And you know what? The American people see it for what it is. No one has the — nobody has the appetite for this anymore. They want to keep doing it? Call for a vote.”
Sekulow isn’t the first to have alleged that the whistleblower had help drafting the complaint. Former CIA analyst and National Security Agency chief of staff Fred Fleitz wrote Thursday in a New York Post op-ed that the complaint “appears to be written by a law professor.” He added that “congressional members or staff” could have played a hand in helping as well.
“It appears to be written by a law professor and includes legal references and detailed footnotes,” Fleitz wrote Thursday. “It also has an unusual legalistic reference on how this complaint should be classified. From my experience, such an extremely polished whistleblowing complaint is unheard of. This document looks as if this leaker had outside help, possibly from congressional members or staff.”
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