Husband-wife attorney duo Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova serve as no-holds-barred messengers to President Donald Trump’s base, lambasting the special counsel and his Russia investigation in mostly conservative outlets. | Fox News white house Forget Rudy: Here are Trump's fiercest defenders Trump chose not to hire lawyers Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, but they are 'playing the role of lawyers' on TV, diGenova says.

Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing didn’t quite make the cut to become President Donald Trump’s attorneys in late March.

But you’d be forgiven for thinking they’re billing Trump by the hour.


Since a plan for the husband-wife duo to represent the president was announced and then aborted, the lawyer-pundits have appeared at least 37 times on Fox News alone.

Even as Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani acts as a kind of emissary to mainstream news outlets from POLITICO to CNN to the New York Times, diGenova and Toensing serve as no-holds-barred messengers to Trump’s base, lambasting special counsel Robert Mueller and his Russia investigation in mostly conservative outlets. The couple sometimes appear together on the same Fox program, or follow one another in back-to-back hours with different hosts.

When told how many times the couple had defended Trump on television over the past two-and-a-half months, Giuliani — not exactly camera-shy himself — burst into laughter.

But the couple’s influence extends beyond the airwaves. Appearing on a Baltimore radio station in early April, diGenova said he and his wife were “playing the role of lawyers on television and in real life” for Trump, whom they informally advise.

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"He'll call four or five people like Joe and say, 'What do you think? So and so says this. Who's right?'” Giuliani said in an interview. He added that the conservative attorneys have sent him written legal advice on how to deal with Mueller, and they also consult with another Trump lawyer, Jay Sekulow.

Underscoring their connection to the president’s team, Toensing used the pronoun “we” during an April Fox News appearance: “We were not going — the president should never, never ever speak to Robert Mueller or any of his lawyers in an interview,” she said.

But perhaps most important of all in Trump’s Washington, the president is watching them on television. Trump has twice tweeted diGenova’s media commentary — most recently on May 31, when the president quoted diGenova calling Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s recusal from the Russia probe “an unforced betrayal of the President of the United States.”

“The recusal of Jeff Sessions was an unforced betrayal of the President of the United States.” JOE DIGENOVA, former U.S. Attorney. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2018

DiGenova is a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and is often identified that way in his Fox News appearances. His wife, with whom he runs a boutique law practice, served in the Reagan Justice Department and has represented a series of high-profile clients in terrorism and national security cases.

The couple’s continued influence in Trump’s world is notable, given the extreme hard line they’ve taken towards the Russia probe. DiGenova recently said that he would fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “in a New York minute, without any question,” while his wife told Fox’s Sean Hannity last month that the Russia probe is really a “brazen plot … to frame Donald Trump” and that the Obama White House “targeted” Trump campaign advisers in 2016.

But they infuriate other legal experts who call their commentary shabby and intentionally misleading.

In a May 31 prime-time appearance on CNN, Toensing called former FBI Director James Comey, along with Patrick Fitzgerald, the former independent counsel in the Bush-era Valerie Plame case “two of the most despicable, despised, unethical prosecutors to ever come down.”

The remarks drew a sharp reaction when Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor who worked under Fitzgerald in the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, followed her on the same program. “She said so many lies and demonstrable ... statements that you could easily look up and find are false,” he responded. “It was hard for me to sit through that segment, to be very frank with you.”

Critics say diGenova, 76, and Toensing, 73, talk as though they’re on Trump’s payroll. They’re not, according to three sources — but they nearly were. In mid-March, Sekulow announced that Trump had hired diGenova to join his defense team. But six days later he issued a second statement explaining that “conflicts” prevented both diGenova and his wife from becoming Trump’s attorneys. The couple did represent two other clients involved in the Russia probe, but both signed waivers clearing them to work with the president.

Other factors seemed to be at play: As POLITICO reported , Trump lawyers argued against their selection, citing their fondness for conspiracy theories. Philip Lacovara, a former counsel for the Watergate prosecution team and a former law partner of Toensing who has known the couple for 30 years, said that diGenova in particular “used to be more mainstream, but the ensuing decades [has shown] a bizarre tendency to spot demonic conspirators lurking behind every bush.”

When the president met the couple for an Oval Office interview in March, according to a senior administration official, Trump was also displeased with their allegedly disheveled appearance. (DiGenova and Toensing declined to comment for this story.)

Giuliani, who signed on to Trump’s personal legal team a month later, argued that not working for the president means his former Reagan-era Justice Department colleagues are “freer” than him to opine, because they don't deal directly with Mueller’s office.

Free they are. In an early June appearance on Fox Business host Lou Dobbs’ program, Toensing accused Obama officials of “making up the evidence to frame the president.”

And after Rep. Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, challenged Trump’s “Spygate” theory that the FBI had infiltrated the Republican’s 2016 campaign for political purposes, diGenova blasted the conservative South Carolina lawmaker, calling his comment “idiotic” and “ludicrous.” (Defending her husband’s heated rhetoric on CNN recently, Toensing said: "Well, he's Italian. What can I say? He talks differently.")

Both lawyers enjoy an open line to Trump: Toensing successfully lobbied the president in April to pardon her client Scooter Libby, a former Bush White House aide convicted on several counts related to the 2003 leak of CIA agent’s identity. But they downplay the notion they’re giving Trump direct advice on the Russia probe. “The only way he’s going to hear what I’m going to tell you is he’s tuned in, and I’m sure he is,” she told MSNBC in May.

In interviews, both Giuliani and Sekulow said they’ve come to lean on Toensing and diGenova as both campaign-style surrogates and outside advisers — consulting with them about their cable show appearances and monitoring one another’s media hits.

DiGenova, for example, got the call to respond after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein vowed last month to resist pressure from House Republicans threatening to impeach him if he didn’t heed their requests to review sensitive documents central to the Mueller investigation.

“The deputy attorney general today disqualified himself from continued service in the Department of Justice,” diGenova said the next night on Fox host Tucker Carlson’s show. “Jeff Sessions now has an absolute responsibility to call him into his office, berate him for saying that constitutional oversight is extortion. That statement by a constitutional officer like Rod Rosenstein is disgraceful. It's an embarrassment to the department.”

DiGenova and Toensing are not new to Trump’s orbit. During the 2016 campaign the two lawyers worked with Giuliani to help formulate some of Trump’s law enforcement positions — and also advised the Republican on how to hone his attacks against Hillary Clinton during the FBI investigation into her use of a private email server. Toensing also organized the pre-election release of an endorsement letter from 240 Reagan administration alumni.

Trump allies insist they’ve brought valuable experience to the president’s defense team.

“Between the two of them it’s hard to match the depth and breadth of experience on issues like this among anyone commenting” about the Russia probe, said Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. “They’re filling an important educational gap… Otherwise the president is all alone in trying to alert the American people to the misconduct and abuses taking place.”

Critics counter that the couple are publicity-seekers with dubious legal credentials. “Legally he’s a middle weight,” one prominent legal expert with ties to Trump’s world said of diGenova.

“Media-wise," he added, "he’s a heavyweight.”