New US attorney general should not halt Mueller probe
No one should doubt that new Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker has been put in charge of the Justice Department for any reason other than to sabotage the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller.
That is why congressional Democrats and even some Republicans are right to be squawking over President Donald Trump’s move last week to oust long-embattled U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and elevate Whitaker into position to play hatchet man on Mueller.
But unleashing Whitaker on Mueller would do the president more harm than good.
The timing of Sessions’ forced resignation and Whitaker’s appointment are troubling enough, coming the morning after midterm elections.
There also are legitimate questions of the constitutionality of Whitaker’s elevation, with the president leapfrogging him over Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The Constitution’s appointments clause would indicate Trump should have made Rosenstein the temporary AG instead of installing a new lightning rod for Democrats’ ire. Another section of federal law would seem to say Trump can appoint Whitaker as acting AG.
Whitaker’s appointment was actually predicted in September when concerns arose that Trump would fire Rosenstein following reports that he had offered to secretly record conversations with the president and had talked about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. Rosenstein denied those reports and has kept his job.
Whitaker is a former University of Iowa football tight end and former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa under President George W. Bush. Two months before Sessions brought him into the Justice Department as chief of staff in October 2017, Whitaker had written a column for CNN arguing the president was right to fight the special counsel’s investigation of finances of the Trump Organization and Trump family members as part of the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
The year before, Whitaker wrote a column for USA Today saying that he would have indicted then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for using a private email server to handle classified documents as secretary of state.
Sessions put himself in the president’s cross hairs early on by recusing himself from any role in the investigation of alleged interference with the 2016 presidential elections because he was an early supporter who had met with a Russian ambassador while working for Trump’s campaign. The recusal put Rosenstein in position to appoint Mueller as special counsel in May 2017 to investigate links between Russia and the Trump campaign as well as any matters stemming from that investigation.
While the investigation has produced 30-some indictments, seven guilty pleas and a criminal conviction, it has not reached an end point and should not be prematurely halted.
An untimely end of the probe is the fear of congressional Democrats, but it should also be a concern of the president and Republicans.
If Mueller is not allowed to finish his work, a cloud of suspicion will forever hang over Trump, his business and his family. The only way to lift allegations of collusion is to see the investigation through and then fight any charges in court.
That’s how the rule of law is supposed to work, and that’s how the nation’s chief executive should want this to end, especially if he has nothing to hide.