The day after the midterm elections, President Donald Trump cast the country right into renewed controversy over the Russia investigation, kicking Attorney General Jeff Sessions out and replacing him with someone (Matthew Whitaker) who’s expressed views on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe that are in line with the president’s own. In the wake of that abrupt shift, outgoing Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake asked for consent to bring a bill he sponsored to protect Mueller to a floor vote this Wednesday, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — who is staying on the job and gets to keep his honorific, for now — blocked the move.
The legislation, if passed, would formalize that only a senior Justice Department official can dismiss a special counsel.
Of course, with Whitaker now on the job, that might not stop the president, but it would be a step in what’s — for many — the right direction. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein used to hold the position of Mueller’s immediate supervisor at the Justice Department, but now it’s Whitaker.
After McConnell shot down his efforts for a vote to protect Mueller, Flake commented:
‘With the firing of the attorney general… the president now has this investigation in his sights and we all know it… How such an investigation can be the cause of controversy is beyond me… Presidents do not get to determine what gets investigated and what and who does not.’
The administration continues to breathe down Mueller’s neck. Whitaker — whose had the legality of his appointment as acting attorney general challenged — has bemoaned the “Mueller lynch mob” in the past. Trump, of course, on his own time has routinely dismissed the significance of the “witch hunt” Mueller is leading.
By all appearances, the FBI director turned special counsel is getting closer to the end of his work. There’s been reporting that his team has begun preparing their final report, with (at least written) answers from the president one of the final orders of business.
Even after the work is complete, though, the administration can subvert the investigation because of the question of what to do with findings — an issue Flake’s legislation doesn’t seem to cover. The report the special counsel will present will initially go the Justice Department, not the public, and the Trump team has indicated they’re interested in keeping it from getting any farther.
In theory, House Democrats — newly in the majority as they are — could subpoena all or parts of the final report.
As his work has seemed to draw to a close, there’s been talk of more looming indictments, including one of Roger Stone associate Jerome Corsi for perjury. Stone has come under scrutiny for the way he presented himself as an intermediary between the Trump camp and Wikileaks and Russia during the lead-up to the 2016 elections. There’s also been reporting that Donald Trump Jr. himself has expressed concern he could be indicted — which remains a possibility of course, but hasn’t happened… yet. A lot of open questions remain.
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