In spite of tweet, lawyer says Trump not under investigation

Sekulow made four TV appearances on Sunday to clarify the situation.

"There has been no notification from the special counsel's office that the president is under investigation", Sekulow said.

President Donald Trump is beginning his day with a stream of tweets defending his record and lashing out at the investigation into Russian interference in the election.

The Rasmussen poll listing Trump at 50 percent approval is sharply at odds with other recent surveys showing that Americans broadly have an unfavorable view of Trump's performance during the first five months of his presidency.

Separately, a former White House lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was nothing stopping Trump or his lawyers from asking Mueller whether Trump was under investigation.Mueller would be allowed, though not required, to answer that question, unless it involved material before a grand jury, the former White House lawyer said.The lawyer also said it was unlikely that any obstruction probe would not examine Trump."It's inconceivable he's not under investigation in the obstruction investigation", the lawyer said.

Sekulow said that Trump's comment was specifically in response to a Washington Post story, quoting unnamed sources familiar with the Mueller investigation, as saying that Mueller was probing whether Trump obstructed justice in firing Comey.

"So here's what you have: the president issued that tweet, that social media statement, based on a fake report, a report with no documented sources, from "The Washington Post", he said".

But Sekulow said repeatedly Sunday that "the president has not been and is not under investigation".

The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee says the panel is looking forward to getting a response from the White House this week as to whether President Donald Trump has tapes of private conversations with fired FBI Director James Comey.

Former FBI Director James Comey told the Senate intelligence committee that Trump pressured him on the Russian Federation investigation and asked him to drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The comment came after the president tweeted on Friday: "I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director!"

Asked if Trump's social media commentary may be created to intimidate Rosenstein or Mueller, Senator Marco Rubio said "I have no basis to make a decision on what his intent is" but added that the tweets "in no way" will impede the work of the investigation.

In the Senate, Sen.

In a two-part tweet posted before 7 a.m., Trump wrote: "The MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN agenda is doing very well despite the distraction of the Witch Hunt". Now, however, his obsessive attacks take on legal meaning - perhaps instances of obstruction of justice in and of themselves, or, at the very least, powerful evidence that Trump would have tried just about anything to throw the Federal Bureau of Investigation off the trail.

"I can say categorically that the collusion or cooperation aspect of the investigation is not over", the Maine senator told "Meet the Press", adding that the probe could be done by the end of 2017.

"They want to lay the foundation to discredit whatever Bob Mueller comes up with", Schiff said. He has tweeted that if President Trump fires "special counsel" Robert Mueller, then "Mike Pence will soon become the 46th President".

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel following Comey's ouster in early May.