WILL THE NEW ACTING AG CAUSE A PROBLEM FOR THE MUELLER INVESTIGATION?
The new Acting AG actually recommended that Don
Jr’s Trump Tower meeting was legal...?
Matthew Whitaker has been appointed acting
attorney General after Jeff Sessions resigned Wednesday at President
Trump’s request. In other words, Trump fired Jeff Sessions for recusing himself
which Session's was required to do by law. But the
ignorant Trump wanted Sessions to cover the President’s ass using the Justice
Dept. Suddenly, Whitaker’s past skepticism about the Russia investigation
has now taken on new significance. And
it is probably why the president picked Mr. Whitaker in the first place.
Trump Tweeted: “We are pleased to announce that Matthew G. Whitaker, Chief of Staff to
Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice, will become our
new Acting Attorney General of the United States. He will serve our Country
well....”
Whitaker’s Russia commentary first cropped up
when he was reported by the White House
to be a likely replacement for Sessions’s No. 2, Deputy Attorney General Rod J.
Rosenstein. This was several weeks ago. However, now installing him in the temporary
No. 1 position, gives Whitaker even more power. The Justice Department has
indicated he will take on the oversight of the Russia investigation,
replacing Rosenstein in that role.
One exchange in particular shows exactly what
Whitaker thinks someone in such a position should or could do to rein in
special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
Appearing on CNN in July 2017, before he became Session’s chief of staff, which was the
position he occupied before Wednesday. Whitaker
presented a scenario in which Trump might fire Sessions and replace him with a
temporary attorney general. Whitaker noted that federal regulations still gave
the attorney general power over the budget for a special counsel. That
temporary replacement, he then said, could move to choke off Mueller’s
funding.
“So, I
could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced with a recess appointment,”
Whitaker said, “and that attorney general
doesn’t fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget to so low that his
investigation grinds to almost a halt.”
This was the second time in the same
interview, in fact, that Whitaker brought up the de-funding idea. He said
Rosenstein could also be pressured to do it.
“I think what ultimately the president is going to start putting pressure on Rod J. Rosenstein, who is in charge of this investigation,
is acting attorney general, and really try to get Rod to maybe even cut the
budget of Bob Mueller and do something a little more stage crafty than the
blunt instrument of firing the attorney general and trying to replace him,” Whitaker said.
Whitaker’s comments to CNN were first flagged by a group called The Law Works .
It’s not difficult to see how Trump might
have seen those comments on CNN and why he
viewed Whitaker as a strong candidate that would do his bidding. In other words, become a Trump lackey.
Whitaker has also made it clear he doesn’t
like how far Mueller has gone. He wrote an op-ed in August 2017 titled, “Mueller’s investigation of Trump is going
too far”. The op-ed urged Rosenstein
to “limit the scope of this
investigation.”
“The
President is absolutely correct,” Whitaker said after Trump suggested that
Mueller investigating his finances would cross a red line . “Mueller has come up to a red line in the
Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to
crossing.”
Whitaker has also downplayed the idea that
anything illegal was done at the Trump Tower meeting, saying, “You would always take the meeting." For an acting AG, Whitaker should know that taking
anything from a foreign entity, especially regarding a US election, is against the law and
Don Jr. should have instead called the FBI.
Whether any of this will come to pass with Whitaker, we
don’t know. But comments like these could now be a sign of things to come.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer
(D-N.Y.) says Whitaker should recuse himself from the Russia investigation, especially
in light of the above commentary.
Per Schumer: “Clearly, the President has something to hide.”
The DOJ spokesperson was asked if Acting AG
Matt Whitaker would take over supervision of the Mueller probe. Her reply:
"The Acting Attorney General is in
charge of all matters under the purview of the Department of Justice."
The future of the special counsel
investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign was thrown into
uncertainty after President Trump ousted Attorney General Jeff Session, who
was a true Trump political loyalist.
Since last year, Rob Rosenstein has overseen
the investigation because Sessions, a key Trump surrogate in 2016, recused
himself from dealing with matters involving the campaign. It wasn’t immediately
clear what role, if any, Rosenstein may play in the probe going forward.
As acting attorney general, Whitaker could
sharply curtail Mueller’s authority by cutting his budget, or by ordering him
to cease any lines of inquiry.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has been seeking to question President Trump as part of his investigation, however the White House lawyers have warned the president that an interview with Mueller could become a perjury trap.
Within hours of Whitaker’s appointment, there
were mounting calls by congressional Democrats and government watchdog groups
for Whitaker to recuse himself, citing critical comments he had previously made about
Mueller’s investigation.
Furious Democrats, emboldened by winning
control of the House, also promised
to investigate Session’s forced resignation and suggested Trump’s actions could
amount to obstruction of justice if he intended to disrupt the criminal probe. But since the Dems won’t take over the House
until January 3rd, the president could do much harm between now and
the first week of 2019.
Some are already calling this the beginning
of a Constitutional Crisis called “The Saturday Night Massacre” , but in
slow-motion.
“There is no mistaking what this means, and what is at stake: this is a
constitutionally perilous moment for our country and for the President,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.) said in a statement. Nadler is set to take over in January as
chairman of the House Judiciary Committee,
the panel that would oversee any presidential impeachment proceedings.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut called
Wednesday’s events “a break-the-glass moment” and said he would be introducing
legislation to protect Mueller’s investigation work.
“Any
attempt to limit his resources or the scope of his investigation is
unacceptable,” he said. “The world,
and history, are watching.”
Trump has insisted that he had a right to end
the investigation, but he said he would prefer to “let it go on.”
“I could fire everybody right now, but I don’t want to stop it because
politically I don’t like stopping it,” Trump said. “It’s a disgrace. It should never have been
started, because there is no crime.” However,
according to the law, there has been a crime, and it could involve his son and
his son-in-law Jared Cushner.
Justice Department officials said Whitaker
will follow the regular process for reviewing possible ethical conflicts, a
process that involves ethics lawyers reviewing an official’s past work to see
whether there are financial or personal conflicts that preclude them from being
involved in particular cases.
Whitaker, a former US attorney in Iowa,
once stated as a legal commentator about how a Sessions replacement
might reduce Mueller’s budget “so low
that his investigation grinds to almost a halt.” In an August 2017 tweet,
he wrote that an opinion piece calling the special counsel investigation a “Mueller lynch mob” is “worth a read.”
Whitaker also wrote in a September
2017 column that Mueller had “come up to
a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously
close to crossing,” this was after CNN reported that the special counsel
could be looking into Trump and his associates’ financial ties to Russia.
The new acting AG also has ties to a Mr. Sam
Clovis, who served as Trump’s national campaign chairman and has been
interviewed as a witness by Mueller’s investigators about his interactions with
foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. Whitaker chaired Clovis’s campaign for Iowa
state treasurer in 2014.
“We’re
currently friends,” Clovis said of Whitaker in an interview with The Washington Post on Wednesday. “I texted him congratulations today.”
Whitaker has not been confirmed by the Senate
and, by law, can serve for only 210 days before he must be replaced by someone
who has been confirmed. That period could be extended if Trump nominates a
replacement who is not immediately confirmed.
Any report that Mueller issues describing his
overall findings would be submitted to Whitaker, who could decide it contained
privileged material that should not be made public.
“Discretion is such a part of what prosecutors do,” said former US attorney Barbara McQuade. “He can’t obstruct justice, but he would have the ability to make
discretionary decisions that could in many ways influence the outcome of the
investigation.”
Still, Whitaker faces some limitations.
Justice Department regulations would allow
him to fire Mueller, but only for misconduct, conflict of interest or other “good cause” issues.
The regulations would allow him to reject
requests by Mueller to take major steps in the investigation. Should he do so,
however, he would be required to provide the chairmen and ranking members of
the House and Senate judiciary committees a “description
and explanation of instances” in which he overruled the special counsel.
Whitaker’s appointment comes at a
particularly critical moment, just as Mueller was expected to soon end what has
been a publicly quiet phase of his investigation.
In the run-up to Election Day, there were no
indictments or public pronouncements by the special counsel’s office. This is in
keeping with Justice Department guidelines that prosecutors should avoid taking
steps that could be perceived as influencing the outcome of the
vote.
With the midterm elections now over, Mueller
faces key decision points in his 18-month-old investigation into Russian
interference in the 2016 campaign. This probe that has led to charges against 32
people, including 26 Russians. Four former aides to Trump have also pleaded guilty
to various charges, most recently his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort in
September.
Among the most pressing matters now before
the special counsel: a probe into longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone’s
activities and ongoing negotiations with Trump’s legal team over a request to
interview him.
For months, Mueller has been seeking to
question Trump as part of his investigation, which is also examining whether
the president has sought to obstruct the probe.
Mueller’s prosecutors have laid out detailed
allegations of how Russia sought to manipulate Americans through social
media, break into state voting systems and hack the email
accounts of Democratic committees and party leaders.
But the special counsel’s team so far has not
indicated publicly that it has drawn any conclusions about whether Trump
associates conspired with the Russians or whether the president obstructed
justice.
[
Behind the scenes, Mueller’s investigators
have been intensively gathering evidence and questioning witnesses in recent
weeks.
The grand jury hearing evidence in the Russia
investigation has been seen meeting at a federal courthouse in Washington on
six of the last eight Fridays.
Based on witnesses who have been called to
the grand jury, the special counsel appears to be intensely focused on Roger Stone.
Meanwhile, the special counsel must decide whether
to accept only written answers from the president or to fight for an interview.
Such a move would probably require
issuing a subpoena to the president, which would then draw a legal challenge
from Trump’s team.
By mid-November, the president’s attorneys
plan to turn over Trump’s written answers to roughly a dozen questions the
special counsel has posed. This includes
the president’s knowledge of the hacked Democratic emails and his advisers’
contacts with Russians during the campaign and transition, according to two
people familiar with the decision.
But the real issue is “What will Trump do to try and stop Robert Mueller III’s investigation,
and now with the Democrats running the House, will they also start a presidential
investigation and seek Trump’s tax returns?”
Stay tuned to this station.
Copyright G. Ater 2018
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