Republican senators who have warned the White House for months not to interfere with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation are coming under new pressure given President Trump’s latest demands for the Department of Justice.
Republican senators believe that if Trump fired Mueller or obviously interfered in his investigation, it would backfire politically and potentially hurt their chances of keeping control of Congress.
They want to avoid an all-out war between Trump and Justice that might draw parallels to the Nixon-era “Saturday Night Massacre,” when senior department officials resigned instead of complying with orders to fire a special counsel.
“I don’t like seeing demands made, especially about political issues,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Monday in reaction to Trump’s demand that the Department of Justice investigate the FBI’s use of an informant during its investigation of the 2016 election.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think it’s better to allow the Department of Justice to make its own decisions and not comment,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
The possibility of a standoff between the White House and Justice that would evoke the firing of Watergate-era special prosecutor Archibald Cox faded for the time being on Monday when officials said the president had agreed to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s decision to refer the matter to the department’s inspector general.
……..
Flake said it would be inappropriate for the department to “allow the president to dictate who’s investigated and who isn’t.”
“That’s just not the president’s call,” he said. “It never has been.”
Legal experts say Trump’s weekend attacks took his battle with the law enforcement agency to a new level.
“He’s certainly crossing a line,” said Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney and deputy assistant attorney general. “It’s foreboding and deeply inappropriate for a president to be calling for this kind of criminal investigation of his perceived enemies.”
“The second order problem here is these are not political enemies, this is the FBI. There’s not an Obama FBI and a Trump FBI,” he added. “It is the Federal Bureau of Investigation and their watchword is they don’t initiate investigations for political reasons.”
……..
Former federal prosecutors say the use of an informant to acquire information is routine and doesn’t even require a search warrant.
They say that Trump’s characterization of the use of the informant as a surveillance operation is misleading.
“It’s completely false to say there was an FBI person planted there,” said Litman. “To use a confidential informant doesn’t even require a search warrant. That’s something that every law enforcement agency does every day.”
……..
- Discussion
-
GOP senators push back against Trump demand for Justice Dept probe into campaign surveillance https://t.co/ZFGYBvJytL pic.twitter.com/zj68ht9aqa
— The Hill (@thehill) May 22, 2018
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.