Trump goes to war with Russia probe

by Sarah Westwood | Jun 18, 2017, 12:01 AM

President Trump and his allies have turned their fire on the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation and even the deputy attorney general who appointed him, raising questions as to how the president plans to navigate a potential obstruction of justice probe while openly sparring with his Justice Department.

The president's shift in tone toward Robert Mueller, the special counsel selected by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on May 17, coincided with growing calls from supporters to consider removing Mueller and Rosenstein. But Trump's sharpened criticism of his investigators also coincided with an expansion of their probe, and the timing of his Twitter tirades against them this week stoked speculation that his anger was tied to the widening scope of the investigation.

Personal associates and allies of Trump argued he should fire Mueller and Rosenstein for different reasons.

For example, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, argued that Mueller's friendly relationship with former FBI Director James Comey should disqualify from him leading an investigation into whether Trump obstructed justice by terminating Comey.

"Get rid of Mueller. He is dirty. He created all kinds of problems," Gohmert said on Tuesday.

Newt Gingrich, a close adviser to Trump during the presidential race, claimed on Thursday that Mueller had set up a "dragnet" designed to catch the president in some form of obstruction.

And on Friday, Roger Stone, a longtime friend of Trump's, encouraged the president to remove both Mueller and Rosenstein "for wasting the taxpayers' money."

Trump himself first took aim at Mueller and Rosenstein, though not by name, in a tweetWednesday that described the leaders of the Russia investigation as "some very bad and conflicted people."

The president's legal team struggled Friday to explain Trump's claim that he is "under investigation" for removing Comey after Trump fired off a series of tweets that called the special counsel's investigation a "witch hunt."

A source close to the team led by Marc Kasowitz, Trump's outside counsel, told the Washington Examiner that Trump intended only to address reports that the Russia investigation had broadened to include an obstruction inquiry, but stressed that the president never aimed to confirm the existence of such a probe.

Trump's implied criticism of Mueller and Rosenstein this week found few supporters among Republicans in Congress. Many GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, affirmed their confidence in Mueller and cautioned the president against removing his special counsel.

The White House this week stayed silent on whether Trump's thinly veiled attacks on Mueller marked a change in strategy for dealing with an investigation that has mushroomed into a massive problem for his administration. And the source close to the president's legal team declined to specify whether Trump had received advice on how to talk publicly about Mueller and instead called attention to "anonymous, illegal leaks" related to the probe.

Trump's turn toward undermining the credibility of his special counsel would not be without historical precedent.

Faced with an independent counsel probe that had crept into matters unrelated to the underlying scandal, former President Bill Clinton and his allies took to criticizing investigators, accusing the independent counsel of leaking for political reasons and questioning whether the independent counsel was conflicted by his outside ties.

Kenneth Starr, who a three-judge panel appointed independent counsel for the Whitewater affair in 1994 under a now-expired statute, dramatically widened the scope of a probe that started as a financial inquiry to include allegations of perjury, obstruction of justice, sexual misconduct and witness tampering.

It was Starr's sweeping investigation -- and Republicans' support for it -- that prompted Hillary Clinton to blame her husband's controversies on a "vast right-wing conspiracy" during a now-famous 1998 interview. Trump's description of his own investigation-fueled controversies -- the "single greatest witch hunt in American political history" -- echoes Hillary Clinton's words.

Just as Trump's legal team sought this week to turn attention toward the "illegal" leaks about Mueller's obstruction-of-justice investigation, the Clintons' allies accused Starr of improperly leaking details from the Whitewater probe.

Starr ultimately pushed back on the claim that conversations between the media and the independent counsel's office about obstruction of justice, among other issues, would break the law.

"[O]ur legal views with respect to the law of certain privileges, the law of civil contempt, the law of conspiracy, perjury, obstruction of justice, and witness intimidation are all proper topics for discussion with reporters," Starr wrote in an open letter to journalist Steven Brill in 1998 after Brill had accused the independent counsel of violating federal law by leaking information about the probe.

The Clintons and their supporters sought to portray Starr as an overzealous, politically motivated prosecutor whose goal had become nabbing the president rather than concluding the investigation when no evidence surfaced to suggest the Clintons had acted illegally in the Arkansas land deal at the heart of the matter.

Gingrich previewed what could become a similar line of attack for Trump allies this week when he described Mueller as part of a "deep state" effort "aimed at destroying or at a minimum undermining and crippling the Trump presidency." The former GOP speaker decried the "redefinition of Mueller's task" to include allegations unrelated to the underlying claim that Trump campaign associates colluded with Russians during the presidential race.

And Gingrich went a step further on Friday when he argued that, "technically, the president of the United States cannot obstruct justice" because his authority as chief executive allows him to dismiss officials like Comey at will.

But Gingrich, who led the Republican House when Starr's work provided the basis for Bill Clinton's attempted removal in 1998, voted in favor of articles of impeachment based on obstruction of justice charges against the former president. At the time, he chastised the Clinton White House for going after Starr.

Starr's most damaging discovery ultimately had nothing to do with Whitewater, the death of White House deputy counsel Vince Foster or any of the other related controversies his office had examined. Instead, the independent counsel found Bill Clinton had likely perjured himself when he denied, under oath, ever having sexual relations with an intern before evidence surfaced to suggest he had indeed carried on an affair with her.

If Trump were to fire Mueller, the president could risk inviting a similar situation: succumbing to controversies that have nothing to do with the original subject of scrutiny. The president's removal of Comey has already created the spectre of obstruction, and his removal of the second lead investigator on the Russia case would only inflame his critics.

Trump's newfound strategy of attacking Mueller could also prove less successful than the Clintons' strategy of attacking Starr.

Bill Clinton and his supporters leaned on what many have characterized as a sympathetic press corps to spread the notion that Starr had steered his investigation into partisan territory. But few would argue that Trump has any such clout with the media, and the president himself has frequently accused reporters of distorting the Russia probe for political purposes.

It is also unclear whether Trump can count on Republicans outside of his small circle of friends to unite behind his campaign against Mueller. What's more, his efforts to undermine the special counsel could further alienate GOP lawmakers at a time when he needs them to push his legislative agenda and stand as a bulwark against Democrats' talk of impeachment.

Trump goes to war with Russia probe - Washington Examiner