Remember when independent counsel Ken Starr indicted President Clinton?
Why can’t special counsel Robert Mueller do the same in his investigation of President Trump?
Former Obama DOJ official Eric Columbus explains why. After the Clinton debacle, the law was changed to limit the power of independent counsels so they’d be under the jurisdiction of the DOJ as merely ‘special’ counsels.
Which means Mueller isn’t independent at all.
He reports to the Attorney General who in turn reports to Trump. And Mueller’s investigation, at worst, can only offer a report to Congress on its findings.
This whole political charade was over before it ever got started.
Here’s more from Daily Caller…
A former Department of Justice appointee under former President Barack Obama said special counsel Robert Mueller “almost certainly won’t indict” President Donald Trump at the conclusion of his investigation.
Eric Columbus, former senior counsel to the deputy attorney general under Obama, explained on Twitter why we should not expect any criminal charges against Trump, despite a growing chorus of pundits and Democratic politicians predicting that Mueller is building an obstruction of justice case.
As Columbus points out, the law guiding independent counsel Kenneth Starr that allowed him to indict then-President Bill Clinton Starr’s investigation into the Clinton during the 1990s had expired in 1999 “amidst concern that ICs had too much leeway,” he writes.
Mueller is a “special counsel,” the position that replaced independent counsels, out of concern that ICs had too much power, Columbus notes.
In other words, Mueller “is essentially the equivalent of a U.S. Attorney, except that his jurisdiction is defined by topic rather than geography,” wrote Columbus. Therefore, Mueller reports to deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein because Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself.
