Dont Lie

[madokie]

Advice to Donald Trump and his associates upon the appointment of a special counsel.

The Justice Department’s appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate l’affaire Russe signals both the seriousness with which this matter is viewed within the nation’s top law enforcement agency and its radioactive nature. That radioactivity likely could have been absorbed by the department’s layers of bureaucracy and professional prosecutorial culture. And then President Donald Trump humiliated the department and its newly confirmed, well-respected deputy Rod Rosenstein—the man in charge of the Russia investigation on account of Attorney Jeff Sessions’ recusal—with his horrific handling of FBI Director James Comey’s firing.

Enter Mueller, a former Marine and Vietnam veteran, a highly acclaimed federal prosecutor, and the longest-serving FBI director after J. Edgar Hoover. Mueller has been granted sweeping powers to handle the matter that burned too hot for main Justice to handle. Although special counsels don’t always generate sensational prosecutions, they do almost always find something. Mueller’s open-ended mandate, and the seemingly ever-increasing extent of the misconduct by senior Trump associates like Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, makes it likely he will uncover something during his inquiry. Special counsels rarely close their cases without a prosecution.

The recent history of special counsels is basically the story of a tug-of-war between our three branches of government over who gets to hold prosecutorial power under the U.S. Constitution, and how best to insulate prosecutors so they can conduct truly independent work. During Watergate, Congress pressured Attorney General Elliot Richardson during his confirmation process to appoint federal Judge Archibald Cox as an “independent” special prosecutor. After Nixon’s resignation, Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act in 1978, creating a mechanism whereby the legislative branch could urge the attorney general to apply to a special three-judge panel for appointment of a special prosecutor, and then formally appoint such a person to act under the Justice Department’s aegis. This unwieldy mechanism was used many times after Watergate; its most famous appointment was that of Kenneth Starr to serve as Whitewater independent prosecutor in 1994.

Mueller was appointed under Justice Department regulations promulgated in 1999 after the independent counsel statute expired. These regulations allow the attorney general to appoint “a lawyer with a reputation for integrity and impartial decisionmaking, and with appropriate experience” from outside the Justice Department to focus on a particular matter or issue. Special counsels are the caped crusaders of the Justice Department, but they don’t work completely outside the chain of command. Department regulations subordinate special counsels to the attorney general, although in this case it’s hard to imagine Sessions (who, again, has recused himself) or Rosenstein countermanding the requests or actions of Mueller.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/05/advice_to_donald_trump_on_how_to_deal_with_special_counsel_robert_mueller.html

[Siwsan]

1. I seriously don't think he's capable of being truthful or honest. His lies are his reality

And won't admit to something that would prove he did something wrong. And if he is, as I suspect, in the beginning throws of some sort of dementia, his reaction to being confronted will likely be very, very much a nasty lashing out.