Special counsel may evaluate Clinton Foundation ‘certain issues’
UNITED STATES: Attorney General Jeff Sessions is leaving open the possibility that a special counsel could be appointed to look into Clinton Foundation dealings and an Obama-era uranium deal, the Justice Department said yesterday.
In a letter to the House judiciary committee, which is holding an oversight hearing today, the Justice Department said Sessions had directed senior federal prosecutors to ``evaluate certain issues’' recently raised by Republican lawmakers.
The prosecutors will report to Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and recommend whether any new investigations should be opened, whether any matters under investigation require additional resources and whether it might be necessary to appoint a special counsel to oversee a probe.
A letter from Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd to the judiciary committee did not say what specific steps might be taken by the Justice Department to address the lawmakers’ concerns, or whether any of the matters Republicans have seized might on already be under investigation.
Any appointment of a new special counsel, particularly in response to calls from members of Congress or from President Donald Trump, is likely to lead to Democratic complaints about an undue political influence on the department’s decision-making.
Trump in recent weeks has repeatedly weighed in on department affairs, publicly lamenting that he does not have more direct involvement with it and calling on law enforcement scrutiny of Democrat Hillary Clinton, his opponent in the 2016 presidential race, and other Democrats.
He has been particularly interested in the Clinton Foundation.
``Everybody is asking why the Justice Department [and FBI] isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems...’' Trump tweeted earlier this month.
In apparent anticipation of those concerns, Boyd said in the letter that Justice Department ``will never evaluate any matter except on the facts and the law’'.
``Professionalism, integrity and public confidence in the department’s work is critical for us, and no priority is higher,’' Boyd said.
Sessions said at his January confirmation hearing that he would recuse himself from any investigations involving Clinton given his role as a vocal campaign surrogate to Trump.
He similarly recused himself from a separate investigation into potential co-ordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, and in May, the Justice Department appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel to lead that probe. – misuse of public funds.
His comments come days after Carme Forcadell, the speaker of the Catalan parliament, told a judge investigating her and five other colleagues for rebellion that the declaration of independence had been merely ‘‘symbolic’’.
Clara Ponsat, one of the four regional ministers who fled to Belgium along with Puigdemont, has also said her government ‘‘was not sufficiently prepared to apply independence’’. The nature of Puigdemont’s participation in the election remains unclear as he awaits a court hearing in Brussels on Spain’s request to have him extradited.
Speaking in Barcelona on Monday in his first visit to Catalonia since he imposed direct rule, Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister, urged Catalans to ‘‘vote massively’’ against separatist parties in the snap election on December 21.
Puigdemont told he does ‘‘not wish to be a candidate for a political party’’, but the idea of a unity list of Catalan parties has lost strength as two major proindependence forces, the Catalan Republican Left and the anticapitalist CUP, announced they would run separately.
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