Abbreviated pundit roundup: Protecting Mueller
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We begin today’s roundup with the The Washington Post and its editorial on the need to protect special counsel Robert Mueller: Now more than ever, the president must get the message: Hands off the special counsel. The warning signs are there for anyonAbbreviated pundit roundup: Protecting Mueller
We begin today’s roundup with the The Washington Post and its editorial on the need to protect special counsel Robert Mueller: Now more than ever, the president must get the message: Hands off the special counsel. The warning signs are there for anyone to see. Mr. Trump just fired Jeff Sessions as attorney general because Mr. Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe instead of protecting the president from it. Mr. Trump tapped — probably illegally — Matthew G. Whitaker to be an interim replacement. Mr. Whitaker is a partisan mediocrity whose appeal seems to be that he attacked Mr. Mueller’s investigation before joining the administration. Elizabeth Drew, who covered Watergate for The New Yorker, says that Trump’s firing of Sessions and his approach to the investigation is worse than Watergate: Each president tried to stir up public impatience with his perceived persecution and thus pressure investigators to hurry up, but Mr. Trump makes Nixon look like a pussycat. Nixon officials were prone to saying things like, “Enough wallowing in Watergate,” while, for example, in early August, Mr. Trump tweeted, “This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now.” Mr. Trump has done much more than Nixon did in trying to damage public trust in whatever their prosecutors might come up with. Natasha Betrand at The Atlantic analyzes the latest, highly specific attacks on Mueller and his team: Whereas Trump typically attacks Mueller’s investigation with the same perfunctory language—calling it a “witch hunt” and “rigged”—he was unusually specific in his accusation that Mueller’s investigators were “threatening” people “to come up with the answers they want.” He made a similar charge in August, claiming that Cohen, who is now cooperating with prosecutors in a separate investigation, “made up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’” [...] Trump’s outburst “could just be another rant,” said Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York who handled organized-crime cases. But on the other hand, it could signal action on the part of prosecutors that Trump registers as a threat. Honig explained that prosecutors sometimes get fed up with people they know are not being honest and threaten to bring charges against them. They may also threaten a person’s status as a potential cooperator, which typically comes with reduced charges. “My hunch is that prosecutors had some sort of ‘Time to get real’ conversation with someone implicated in the investigation, which was then relayed to Trump by defense attorneys,” Honig said. Read more