Our view: Don’t wait for Mueller to be fired; protect him now
As Robert Mueller's investigation gains momentum, President Trump’s rhetoric against the special counsel grows more threatening. Mueller’s inquiry is “a total witch hunt with massive conflicts of interest,” the president complained in a tweet this week.
At best, the president is trying to soften up Mueller in the court of public opinion — and test the limits of Republican loyalty. At worst, he is laying the groundwork to act on his brooding instincts and fire Mueller, who was appointed by the Justice Department to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and any related crimes.
That makes it imperative for congressional Republicans who care about the rule of law to establish their own “red line” — and to work with Democrats to pass legislation to protect Mueller’s inquiry by statute.
Firing Mueller wouldn’t be as easy as dismissing FBI Director James Comey or Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Mueller can be fired only by the deputy attorney general, who would presumably resign rather than carry out Trump’s order. But the president could engineer it, nonetheless, by terminating enough Justice Department officials until he had his way.
Most Republicans have been shamefully silent about this prospect, made more plausible in recent days by Trump castigating Mueller by name for the first time.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan spoke out in support of Mueller on Tuesday, but stopped short of calling for legislation to protect him, with Ryan adding that he had received “assurances” there would be no firing. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake said Trump would risk impeachment if he fired Mueller.
But can we be sure about that? Would a GOP-led Congress that can barely agree on short-term government funding coalesce around the monumental and inevitably partisan task of trying to remove a sitting president?
Trump would have his reasons for firing Mueller, however contrived. By regulation, the special counsel can be dismissed for, among other things, a “conflict of interest or other good cause,” and the president is already drumming up those grounds.
Such concocted logic might be enough for die-hard Trump supporters in the House to sway squeamish colleagues into blocking impeachment. Meanwhile, the president would have at least momentarily frustrated an inquiry that could threaten his power.
Mueller already has obtained five guilty pleas and indicted former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, 13 Russians and three Russian entities. If Trump is as guiltless as he insists, why not cooperate fully and let Mueller’s investigation run its course?
Given the stakes, it’s not enough for GOP lawmakers to speak up in support of Mueller, a highly respected Republican, former FBI director and decorated Marine. They also have a duty to safeguard his investigation. Two bipartisan measures, pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee, would protect him.
Pass one of them now, by a vetoproof margin, before it’s too late.