The Washington Post reports the probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election has widened to include a closer look at the president’s actions.
It’s unclear how the revelation of Mueller’s expanded investigation will affect the long-term survival of his inquiry. Trump considered ousting the special counsel in recent weeks, only to be talked out of it by virtually the entire White House staff. Under Justice Department rules, Trump cannot fire Mueller directly—that power is held by Rosenstein as acting attorney general. (Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation in March.) Rosenstein assured Congress at a hearing on Tuesday that Mueller has “full independence” and that he would not fire him without “good cause,” which DOJ rules narrowly define as “misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or … violation of departmental policies.”
If Trump nonetheless moved ahead and ordered Rosenstein to fire Mueller, it would almost certainly spark a political crisis and could present serious challenges to the American rule of law: No president has fired a special prosecutor investigating his own conduct since Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre in 1974 during the nadir of the Watergate crisis.
To Defend Trump, the GOP Is Becoming a Party Bill Clinton Would Love
Donald Trump’s supporters create endless alibis for him, just as Bill Clinton’s did for him.
.. He inspired such fanatical devotion (and gratitude for his key policy decisions) that men and women were willing to lie for him, sacrifice their principles for him, and in one notorious case even go to jail to protect him.
.. He inspired such fanatical devotion (and gratitude for his key policy decisions) that men and women were willing to lie for him, sacrifice their principles for him, and in one notorious case even go to jail to protect him.
.. This meant that they simply held him to a different standard. He could lie; his opponents could not. He got the benefit of the doubt despite admitted affairs, multiple credible claims of sexual harassment, and even one disturbing account of rape. But that’s just Bubba being Bubba, right? How can he help it if women love him, and besides, aren’t we Americans just a tad too uptight about sex? European politicians flaunt their mistresses and no one cares.
.. The question of the controversy morphed. The central question wasn’t “Did Bill Clinton commit the crime of perjury by lying under oath?” It was instead, “Who do you want to win this political battle? The president of peace and prosperity or the sneaky Linda Tripp and the obsessive Ken Starr?”
.. Think of the avalanche of vitriol against James Comey. Trump fired him, misled the public about the reasons, and then absurdly trashed his reputation. But how dare Comey fight back and defend himself? How dare he “leak” a memo?
.. The Clinton playbook left a party robbed of moral authority to confront Trump, and it indeed helped make his victory possible.
.. The Clinton playbook left a party robbed of moral authority to confront Trump, and it indeed helped make his victory possible.
Trump surrogates go after Mueller
Many in the president’s circle praised the special counsel’s appointment last month but have publicly turned against him in recent days.
Robert Mueller’s glow is fading.
The special counsel who earned bipartisan praise last month as an unimpeachable investigator who would give President Donald Trump a fair shake in the Russia probe is now taking heat from Trump surrogates intent on trying to undercut his integrity.
The wave of freelance attacks, which gathered steam over the weekend following Comey’s dramatic testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, echoes tactics used by Democrats in the 1990s to undercut special prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s investigation into the Clinton White House.“I think the idea of having an enemy when you’re the object of a special prosecutor is a very important one,” said Dick Morris, who helped pioneer the anti-Starr strategy as a Clinton adviser but is now a Trump fan.
“Clinton only survived a special prosecutor because he made Ken Starr the enemy,” Morris added.
- Sidney Powell .. wrote an op-ed questioning one of Mueller’s staffers on the conservative site Newsmax, which is run by Trump friend Chris Ruddy.
- Writing in the Washington Examiner, columnist Byron York suggested Mueller may not be the right person for the job because he’s been friends with Comey for 15 years.
- Ann Coulter complained in a post that Attorney General Jeff Sessions “never should’ve recused himself” .. “Now that we know TRUMP IS NOT UNDER INVESTIGATION, Sessions should take it back & fire Mueller.”
- Newt Gingrich, who in a Sunday interview on Fox News echoed the president’s complaints that the Mueller probe is a “witch hunt,”
- It was a big reversal for the former House speaker, who wrote in a Twitter post on May 17, the day the Justice Department announced the special counsel appointment: “Robert Mueller is a superb choice. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity. Media should now calm down.”
- The shift from targeting Comey to targeting Mueller became apparent over the weekend, when one of the president’s personal attorneys, Jay Sekulow, in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” declined to rule out the possibility the president might fire the special counsel.
- During the Clinton era, Democrats called Starr a “federally paid sex policeman” who ran an unethical probe and had a conflict of interest.
.. said Trump surrogates don’t need to level attacks against Mueller, even if such an approach has often been favored in the past by the president’s New York-based personal attorney.
“Kasowitz loves this junkyard dog thing,” the attorney said. “My experience is that’s, more often than not, not a winning strategy.”
.. questioning Mueller over the staffers he’s appointed who donated to Democratic candidates “might be effective” for the Trump defense team. “It’s not an unreasonable narrative to start saying the team that has been put together is tainted,” he said.
But, he added, such a strategy could risk a backlash. “If you’re trying to affect the narrative, I think going after and attacking people of that stature who are not partisan people is really a mistake,” he said.
.. Mueller had interviewed with Trump to succeed Comey as FBI director.
.. For now, Morris said “Comey represents a better enemy than Mueller.” But he also suggested that Mueller will become a ripe target as the investigation unfolds, allowing Trump’s defenders to paint the investigation as an either-or proposition.
The Daily 202: Trump White House might learn more from studying Whitewater than Watergate as Comey testifies
Changing your story, even slightly, looks like a cover up.
“Put a process in place to ensure consistent and accurate communication about the facts. It should be the job of the special counsel to gather the facts and equip the president and White House staff to speak with authority … Anyone talking to the press or interacting with Congress should be armed with enough information to respond with consistent message points. …
.. Bad things happen when key players stray from the message
.. or have their own communications with the press or Congress that haven’t been coordinated with the special counsel.
.. Giving an unequivocal answer (e.g., ‘No. No. Next question.’) before all the facts are known or fully understood can be disastrous. … Loss of discipline deepens the crisis.”
.. Take the initiative to disclose bad facts, Jane concludes: “Being tempted to evade the truth, or to shade it, will only end up creating more of a mess for a White House already in trouble.”
.. the special prosecutor couldn’t take down Clinton, but he did ruin Jim Guy Tucker’s life. Clinton’s successor as governor of Arkansas was convicted on charges that he’d lied on his application for a loan a decade earlier when he was in the television business. “Trump’s aides would be well-served by googling him — and Webb Hubbell, and Susan and Jim McDougal, and William J. Marks Sr. — about the brutal collateral damage of Starr’s investigation,”
.. Mueller may well prosecute offenses that appear tangential to the Russia case in order to turn targets into witnesses .. Seeking witnesses who would testify against Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Office of Independent Counsel … indicted well over a dozen of their friends and acquaintances, most of whom had nothing to do with Whitewater at all.”
.. Mueller’s reported decision to take over the Virginia grand jury probing former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s lobbying for Turkish interests might be an early window into how he’ll operate.
.. “Flynn’s legal jeopardy in the Turkish matter will provide heavy leverage over the retired general to testify about Trump,” Joe explains. “And Trump’s fractious and tarnished aides are a prosecutor’s dream.
.. It isn’t so far-fetched to imagine how Mueller might uncover new information about … Chris Christie, who barely escaped prosecution in the ‘Bridgegate’ scandal that sent three of his aides to prison. And then what would Christie say about Trump?”
.. The investigations will likely drag on beyond the end of Trump’s presidency.
.. Clinton staffers quickly had to learn that there were certain things they dare not discuss, and that some meetings were better not attended.”
.. Trump almost certainly does not benefit as much from executive privilege and attorney-client privilege as he thinks.
.. “A pair of legal showdowns between Ken Starr’s office and the Clinton White House two decades ago erased the idea that presidents and their aides are protected by attorney-client privilege when talking with government lawyers,”
.. However, communications directly with Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s personal attorney who’s been tapped to lead the group of lawyers representing the administration in the Mueller probe and related congressional investigations, would be easier to shield.”
.. But legal experts say there are limits and hazards to pushing scandal-related matters to outside lawyers
.. “Some lawyers said it is even possible Kasowitz could be deemed a White House staffer if he takes on too large a role. …
.. the government-paid team is often more responsive to political concerns while the outside lawyers tend to be focused more on avoiding criminal liability.”
.. If you’re sitting in the Oval Office with Kasowitz and he’s talking to Donald Trump and [Sean] Spicer walks into the room … that discussion could be subject to compelled testimony,”