It’s time for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to rescind Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel.
In March 2017, following Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal, Rosenstein, as acting attorney general, appointed Mueller to oversee the investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. As Mueller’s investigation dragged on, revealed no evidence of collusion, and wandered into completely unrelated areas — such as the indictment of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort on multiple counts of bank fraud that allegedly occurred years before he joined the campaign — Republicans began to question Rosenstein’s decision.
Last month, Senate Judiciary Chair Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, highlighted several concerns surrounding Rosenstein’s handling of the appointment. In a seven-page letter, Grassley directed Rosenstein to explain the scope of Mueller’s authority, confirm that he had complied with Department of Justice regulations governing the appointment of a special counsel, and justify his decision to charge the special counsel with overseeing a counterintelligence investigation.
Grassley correctly identified the deficiencies underlying Rosenstein’s appointment of Mueller to serve as a special counsel. However, even assuming Rosenstein properly appointed Mueller to serve as a special counsel, recent revelations demand he revisit that decision.
In just the last two weeks, we have learned that at least four members of the special counsel team held a clear bias against President Trump. With the release of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s review of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email account and private server, came details of text messages exchanged by FBI agent Peter Strzok and his mistress, Lisa Page, a lawyer who served for two years as a special counsel for former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Strzok and Page were involved in both the investigation of Clinton and the probe into the Trump campaign, and both later joined Mueller’s special counsel team. In addition to the already reported anti-Trump vitriol Strzok and Page exchanged via text, Horowitz’s review revealed a recently recovered thread in which Page begged Strzok to assure her that Trump would not become president. Strzok complied, promising: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” Horowitz’s report also revealed for the first time that two other agents assigned to the special counsel’s team likewise exchanged text messages exposing deeply held animus toward Trump.
After Horowitz informed Mueller of the text messages, Mueller removed the four agents from the special counsel’s team. But that the special counsel’s office selected multiple individuals with a clear bias against Trump in the first case irreparably damages the integrity of Mueller’s investigation.
Also, it is mere happenstance that Mueller learned of the actual bias of his team members. Had the couples not been so frank and reckless in their communications, Mueller may never had known of their anti-Trump prejudice. Further, it appears from Strzok’s text to Page, “God I suddenly want on this. You know why,” that Strzok intentionally sought out his appointment to the special counsel team.
How many other members of Mueller’s team are Washington insiders, hostile to Trump? How many team members purposefully joined Mueller’s group to trigger Trump’s impeachment? We may never know. And that is why Mueller’s special counsel appointment must end: Americans no longer view the special counsel office as a disinterested, unbiased, and independent source for investigating allegations of collusion with Russia.
That does not mean, though, that legitimate investigations must end. Rather, Rosenstein should remove the special counsel and reassign any open investigations to the appropriate United States attorney’s offices, just as occurred with the case against Trump attorney Michael Cohen. Should there remain any issues related to Russia’s interference with the 2016 president election, those lines of investigation should be shifted to a United States attorney far removed from the D.C. scene, just as Sessions did when he appointed Utah United States Attorney John Huber to investigate the Obama administration’s abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Nothing less will assure that justice is both achieved and perceived.
Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty member and current adjunct professor for the college of business at the University of Notre Dame.
