Justice Department leaders have discussed the matter more seriously, according to CNN, amid reports that Trump could announce a presidential bid as early as Monday night.
Several legal observers interviewed by The Hill said it would be a bad idea for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel. “If they’re going to get a special counsel because they think it’s going to protect the prosecution of the former president from a political attack on the grounds that the indictment is politically motivated, that’s a fool’s errand because going that route will have minimal impact on the scope and scope of criticism,” said Jeff Robbins, an attorney now in private practice who has served as both a federal prosecutor and Senate investigative counsel. Legal experts say Attorney General Merrick Garland should know that many Trump supporters will not be satisfied with a prosecution regardless of who takes the reins. “If the appointment of an independent counsel was meant to prevent criticism, that wouldn’t have worked anyway,” said Michael Bromwich, who served as the Justice Department’s inspector general during the Clinton administration and as the prosecutor for the independent counsel who investigated Iran. Counter scandal. He said people who “don’t like any prosecutor who decides to indict Trump will find a way to dislike it.” “And so the attacks on Merrick Garland will be there if he keeps the case, and there will be if he appoints a special counsel to take over the decision-making authority in the case,” Bromwich said. “Well, I think he’s found out that it’s a no-win situation. And I think he understands that.”
The Justice Department has its own regulations on when to appoint a special counsel to oversee an investigation, but ultimately gives the attorney general broad discretion on when to do so. Andrew Weissmann, who was one of the lead prosecutors in Mueller’s probe, said he suspected the Justice Department had long ago evaluated whether to bring in a special counsel and decided not to, but is reconsidering given Trump’s possible announcement. “I think it’s responsible if they see it again,” he said.
“For me, I considered it, as that’s what a Merrick Garland Department of Justice would do. It is a place of rule of law. There’s a regulation that says you’re supposed to look into these issues. Events can change, so they need to look to see if their assessment should change if events change. And I suspect they will come out in the same place,” he said. He added that an early announcement of a presidential bid by Trump would change little given that Trump is the “de facto leader of the Republican Party.”
“So I just didn’t know that resolution changes that much,” Weissmann said. A campaign launch by Trump would only add to the timeline pressures on the Justice Department. Experts say appointing a special counsel would be a lengthy process for a Justice Department with no time to waste. Beyond recruiting someone to fill the role, a special counsel would need time to read Trump’s two investigations — one into the mishandling of presidential records found at Mar-a-Lago and the other into his role on January 6, 2021, an attack on the Capitol.
“It would slow it down too much. And so one, I think, very strong argument is that you want as little of this investigation and any charges as possible to overlap with the presidential campaign,” Bromwich said. And it would likely require significant Justice Department resources anyway. “I think appointing a special counsel would in many ways be more symbolic than real because not only do they have to build on work that’s already been done by the Justice Department lawyers. They would probably have to refer a lot of these lawyers to the special counsel in order to continue doing the work because that’s where the expertise is,” Bromwich added. Robbins said such a move would help arguments that the special counsel is nothing more than a “disingenuous fig leaf.” It is also unclear who the special adviser might be or whether he would appeal to a strong candidate. “If there was anyone whose credibility as a nonpartisan prosecutor should have been unassailable, it was Bob Mueller. Highly scrutinized on both sides of the aisle, the FBI director approved the extension on both sides of the aisle — the whole drill. It didn’t affect the attack on him from Trump World one iota,” Robbins said. Weissmann said he believes the environment for special counsel has only gotten worse since he helped with Mueller’s investigation into Trump and Russia. “There’s a book about offending a special counsel. I never thought we could be in a more volatile place [time] than when Robert Mueller was special counsel. Although there were many threats, I think it has gone to a new level, which is hard to imagine,” he said. Robbins, however, also sees little benefit in looking outside the Justice Department when what he sees as the perfect man right now is already on the job. Hillicon Valley — Musk boosts GOP ahead of Election Day On The Money — Five things to know about the economy before you vote “How do you find someone better suited to appear above the fray than Merrick Garland, a former highly respected, mild-mannered, by-the-book, famously prudent, famously restrained appeals court [who] he tried at every turn to avoid presenting himself as partisan and who is not partisan by nature,” he said.
“How do you find someone who was better than him to act as the impartial face of such a delicate prosecution?” Robbins asked. “It’s not easy,” he added.