President Trump launched a three-tweet frontal attack at Special Counsel Robert Mueller today, saying his entire inquiry into allegations of 2016 campaign collusion with the Kremlin is ‘illegal’ and never should have begun.
That’s a view that four federal judges, including one he appointed, shot down last year.
So, if there was knowingly & acknowledged to be “zero” crime when the Special Counsel was appointed, and if the appointment was made based on the Fake Dossier (paid for by Crooked Hillary) and now disgraced Andrew McCabe (he & all stated no crime), then the Special Counsel…….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2019
….should never have been appointed and there should be no Mueller Report. This was an illegal & conflicted investigation in search of a crime. Russian Collusion was nothing more than an excuse by the Democrats for losing an Election that they thought they were going to win…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2019
…..THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO A PRESIDENT AGAIN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2019
Mueller is expected to wind down his probe soon and deliver his findings to Attorney General William Barr, who has the authority to decide how much of it to share with Congress and the American public.
Trump’s argument hinges on recent revelations that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had no information that a crime had been committed when he hired Mueller, a former FBI director, to open his investigation.
Trump also claimed today that a ‘Fake Dossier’ of unproven and sometimes lurid accusations against him, which was funded by Hillary Clinton’s rival campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was the flame that lit Mueller’s torch.
And he accused Democrats of using ‘Russian Collusion’ as a jumping-off point to distance themselves from the loss of a winnable presidential campaign.
Trump has made similar assertions ad nauseam during the past two years.
At least four federal judges have publicly disagreed with most of Trump’s assessment about Mueller’s legitimacy.
His main contention today, however, was that the Justice Department lacked the legal authority to open a special counsel probe without having evidence of a crime.
U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, ruled in August that Mueller’s probe is consistent with the U.S. Constitution.
A Russian company facing a federal indictment for its alleged financial backing of an enormous U.S. political influence operation had claimed the investigation was illegitimate.
Concord Management had argued that Mueller’s power is so vast, and in some ways immune from Justice Department oversight, that his position should have been subject to Senate confirmation.
That’s a distinction made between so-called ‘senior’ and ‘junior’ federal officers. Mueller is legally considered the latter.
Friedrich acknowledged that federal laws ‘do not explicitly authorize’ the appointment of a special counsel.
But she determined that while regulations that apply to his operation are vague enough to give him broad authority, the attorney general has the power to rescind them at will.
D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Beryl Howell issued a lengthy ruling days earlier, rejecting similar arguments from Andrew Miller, an associate of longtime Trumpworld insider Roger Stone, who had asked her to quash a subpoena for testimony before Mueller’s federal grand jury.
And both jurists who sentenced onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort this month — D.C. Judge Amy Berman Jackson and Eastern Virginia District Judge T.S. Ellis — ruled during his criminal trials against efforts to invalidate the special counsel’s mandate.
Most legal experts agree that the Attorney General will be forced to release the report with public interest demanding it, along with the Democratic majority in the House.