House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wants the Justice Department to grant an ethics rule waiver to allow former FBI Director Robert Mueller to investigate Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign.
Mueller was named special counsel for the investigation into Russian cyber-attacks against the Democratic party, which includes a probe of the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to the Russian government. But Mueller’s former law firm has represented President Trump’s son-in-law and his former campaign manager, reportedly leading the Trump team to consider invoking an ethics rule that could restrict Mueller’s ability to investigate those men.
“These ethics rules were designed to prevent conflicts of interest, not to allow the White House or the President to avoid the full scrutiny of a special counsel or to impugn the credibility of a distinguished public servant,” Pelosi, a California Democrat, said Saturday evening.
Mueller was named special counsel on Wednesday after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. The White House initially said that decision was made pursuant to a memo written by deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein outlining Comey’s violation of DOJ procedures during the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. Trump added, in a televised interview, that he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he fired Comey.
“[W]hen I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said ‘you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won,” Trump told NBC.
Rosenstein subsequently named Mueller, who preceded Comey as head of the FBI, to serve as special counsel. Pelosi wants that to remain the case. “House Democrats call upon Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein to fend off attempts to thwart the federal investigation and issue the appropriate waiver now,” she said. “He should do so today.”
