Resistance (At All Costs) by Kimberley Strassel

Author:Kimberley Strassel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2019-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Republicans were right to spend so much of early 2017 opposing Democratic calls for a special counsel. Nothing good has ever come of those posts. Exhibit A: Comey’s appointment in 2003 of his good buddy U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate who leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name to the press. Fitzgerald discovered early on that the leak had come from then–Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Rather than close up shop, he pursued flimsy obstruction charges against Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby. Fitzgerald let the country incorrectly believe for two years that a crime may have been committed by people close to the president and the vice president.

Republicans also understood the Democrats’ ultimate goal: to prosecute their way to the presidency. Americans elected Trump in 2016, but the haters refused to accept the results. Democrats, too, knew the history of special counsels and reckoned another one was their best shot at erecting a legal case against Trump, either paving the way for impeachment or easing their path to the White House in 2020.

But the GOP’s capitulation on a special counsel in the spring of 2017 held consequences far beyond the Trump presidency—it opened the door to more abuse of core institutions as well as the erosion of constitutional powers.

Mueller’s appointment stretched the boundaries of the DOJ’s special-counsel regulations, making that position even more threatening in the future. Rosenstein made a serious error with his appointment letter: He didn’t task Mueller with investigating a specific crime. His order instead charged Mueller with investigating “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald J. Trump,” as well as “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” It was the first time a special counsel had been handed a broad counterintelligence investigation, and it allowed Mueller to probe anyone or anything even vaguely associated with the Trump campaign, for any reason. Special counsels are already supremely powerful. This unclear assignment guaranteed the Mueller probe would be longer and more intrusive than most, and would create an unnerving precedent for the future.

The ambiguity meanwhile allowed Mueller to brazenly pick up and run with the Comey-McCabe obstruction claim. At the time of the appointment, Comey had already leaked his memos and launched his obstruction narrative. If Rosenstein had wanted Mueller to look into obstruction, he’d have spelled that out. He deliberately did not include it in his appointment letter. Mueller used his fuzzy marching orders as his excuse to proceed anyway.

And the Comey-Mueller obstruction claim carried debilitating consequences for the office of the presidency. Presidents who exercise their legitimate powers of office cannot be accused of obstructing justice. Among those core powers are the right to direct law enforcement and to fire appointees. Trump might have erred in firing Comey at the precise time he did, but there is no question he had the right to make the error. If Congress believes a president has abused his powers, the Constitution provides it with a remedy: the power to impeach.

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