President Donald Trump has just fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Rather than naming Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to the position of Attorney General or Acting Attorney General, Trump has picked a conservative attorney identified by the Federalist Society – the same group that picks Trump’s judicial nominees – who thinks Special Counsel Robert Mueller has gone too far.
Since the Special Counsel must report to the Attorney General, unless the AG has recused himself from the investigation, Rod Rosenstein has just been stripped of supervision of Robert Mueller and the Russia probe.
Trump has just named Matthew Whitaker as his Acting Attorney General.
Which means Robert Mueller just got a new boss.
In August of 2017, Whitaker wrote a CNN op-ed titled, “Mueller’s investigation of Trump is going too far.”
“Mueller’s investigators could be looking into financial records relating to the Trump Organization that are unrelated to the 2016 election,” Whitaker wrote.
He adds, “investigating Donald Trump’s finances or his family’s finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign and allegations that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government or anyone else. That goes beyond the scope of the appointment of the special counsel.”
Whether or not that’s true, it doesn’t matter.
District Attorneys, prosecutors of all stripes and at all levels go where the evidence takes them, and a crime is a crime.
The Special Counsel who investigated Bill and Hillary Clinton did so under the guise of “Whitewater,” a supposed stock scam, which by the way was not. But that investigation ultimately led to Clinton’s impeachment.
To be clear, Trump is actively working to neuter the Mueller investigation. And Republicans are looking the other way.