In an OP-ED for USA Today, George W. Bush’s Attorney General Michael Mukasey called for the end to the Mueller investigation.
It starts out with him laying out the two reasons to appoint a special prosecutor.
- there is reason to think that a federal crime has been committed
- investigating it would present a conflict of interest for the Justice Department or there is another overriding public reason to take the investigation outside DOJ.
Because Attorney General Jeff Sessions had worked on the Trump campaign, he recused himself from the matter, and so the deputy — Rod Rosenstein — took the decision to appoint a special counsel. The regulations require that such an appointment recite the facts justifying the conclusion that a federal crime was committed, and specify the crime. However, the initial appointment of Robert Mueller did neither, referring instead to a national security investigation that a special counsel has no authority to pursue.
Although Rosenstein apparently tried to correct his mistake in a new appointment memo, he has thus far refused to publicly disclose a complete copy of it. In other investigations supposedly implicating a president — Watergate and Whitewater come to mind — we were told what the crime was and what facts justified the investigation. Not here.
Nor have any of the charges filed in the Mueller investigation disclosed the Trump campaign’s criminal acceptance or solicitation of help from the Russians. The one indictment that relates to Russian criminality charges that the Russians committed social media abuses, but says specifically that if the Trump campaign got the benefit of it, that was “unwitting†— i.e., without criminal intent.
Since then, although the White House has produced documents in the tens of thousands, the investigation has gotten further from anything suggesting Trump campaign criminality involving Russian influence, not closer. Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, however fascinating, have nothing to do with Russian campaign influence.
After this, he goes onto call for the end of the Mueller investigation. He gives two reasons for this.
The first is that he points out that law requires a Special Counsel to investigate a crime and not be a lone ranger.
The Second is the fact that a sitting President is forced to deal with this probe and try to run the country while doing it.
In March it was rumored that Michael Mukasey would join Trump’s legal team but it never ended up happening.
