Donald Trump has wanted Special Counsel Robert Mueller to wrap up his investigation as soon as it began. The special counsel’s has had a federal grand court for 18 months, and he just renewed the court for another six months. Of course, Mueller does not have to use all of that time. In fact, Mueller may wrap up at least a portion of the investigation by February 2019. Now, Trump has decided to try a different tactic.
POTUS put an acting attorney general (AG) and yes man Matthew Whitaker in place as soon as he fired the former attorney general Jeff Sessions. Given Whitaker’s propensity for bending the law, it is possible that Trump knows everything the person manning the special counsel’s investigation, Whitaker, knows.
It is also very possible that the president will try to suppress parts of Mueller’s report. Unfortunately, federal regulation states that Mueller must submit the report to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) leaders. Then, the AG decided whether to give it to Congress or not. In fact. Whitaker could just dump the report into the trash.
It appears, Trump will try to block portions of the special counsel’s findings about Russia’s attack on the U.S. 2016 presidential election and beyond. Mueller has also been investigating the conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Moscow. That fight with Congress over the report could go all the way to the Supreme Court, according to The Bloomberg News.
Democrats have won the majority in the House, and they have said they will insist the DOJ give them the report. On the other hand, the White House could assert executive privilege to block the report from going to Congress.
Chair of the House Judiciary Committee Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) had this to say about executive privilege:
‘(I) predicted any effort to suppress (Mueller’s report) will not hold up in court (a claim of) executive privilege can always be pierced by a specific and legitimate criminal or congressional inquiry.’
Both Whitaker and the president’s nominee for attorney general, William Barr, have actively criticized the Mueller investigation.
The president and his attorneys will get a chance to go over the report if it goes beyond the attorney general’s office. That is the point where they may call for executive privilege on anything that happened during Trump’s transition and presidency.
Trump’s television attorney Rudy Giuliani said that the president is prepared to fight the matter all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary:
‘We will look at it and see if the president thinks there is a valid claim and if there is, do we want to make it. We reserve the right. We don’t know if we have to, but we haven’t waived it.’
Former White House counsel to President Richard Nixon, John Dean, turned against Nixon in the Watergate scandal. He believes that claiming executive privilege would be an “absurd” strategy for Trump’s attorneys.
Dean called Trump claiming executive privilege was just a “stalling tactic:”
‘…(a successful) stalling tactic (to) tie it up in the lower courts for a couple of years…
Trump can’t stop Mueller from going to Congress and talking about everything that’s in his report.’
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
