Justice Department appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special prosecutor for Russia probe. The Justice Department on Wednesday appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to oversee a federal investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. Ref. Source 9y.
Image from Wikimedia public domain.
Robert Mueller (Hover)
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein says he sees no cause for firing Robert Mueller, and it is his call. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that he alone has the legal authority to fire special counsel Robert Mueller and that at this point there is no cause to do so. Rosenstein appointed Mueller last month to run the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election because Attorney General Jeff Sessions - a former Trump campaign adviser - has recused himself. Media reports Monday indicated that President Trump may have been considering firing Mueller. Ref. USAToday.
And again, I dislike special prosecutors. They often go fishing and look for anything to justify their existence. That is what happened to the Clintons during Whitewater, the one during Iran Contra, and the one during President Bush's administration. In none of them did they find any wrongdoing in what they were originally chartered for. There may be other examples.
Special counsel Robert Mueller has asked the White House to preserve all documents relating to the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort had with a Russian lawyer and others, according to a source who has seen the letter.
Mueller sent a notice, called a document preservation request, asking White House staff to save "Any subjects discussed in the course of the June 2016 meeting" and also "Any decisions made regarding the recent disclosures about the June 2016 meeting," according to the source, who read portions of the letter to CNN.
The preservation request is broad and includes text messages, emails, notes, voicemails and other communications and documentation regarding the meeting and any related communication since then.
A White House spokeswoman told CNN they don't comment on internal communications and the special counsel's office declined to comment. Ref. CNN.
Special counsel Robert Mueller using multiple grand juries in Russia inquiry. Russia special counsel Robert Mueller is using at least two grand juries - in Virginia and Washington, D.C. - to advance a wide-ranging federal inquiry into possible coordination between President Trump's campaign and Moscow, a lawyer involved in the case said Friday. As he investigates Russia's interference in the presidential election, Mueller may continue to use multiple panels or eventually consolidate those efforts in Washington, where the special counsel's team has only begun to use a grand jury in recent weeks. Ref. USAToday.
President Trump says he won't fire special counsel Robert Mueller: 'I'm not dismissing anybody'. President Trump says he does not intend to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, whose federal investigation into Russia's election meddling he frequently denounces as a "Witch hunt" or a "Hoax." Trump told reporters: "I haven't given it any thought. I've been reading about it from you people. You say, 'Oh, I'm going to dismiss him.' No, I'm not dismissing anybody." Ref. USAToday.
President Trump talked to reporters today about a bunch of wide ranging issues. He sounded quite intelligent and he new what he was speaking about. Look, the man is certainly not perfect… but neither was President Obama, except if you talked to the press and then he was the second coming. So, why have the swung the pendulum so far in the other direction?