If Trump did this, it wouldn’t solve his problems, and would instead create new ones.
By Andrew Prokopandrew@vox.com Updated Dec 18, 2017, 3:08pm EST
With special counsel Robert Mueller facing a deafening drumbeat of criticism from conservatives in recent days, Democrats have grown increasingly worried — and some conservatives have grown hopeful — that President Donald Trump will fire him any day now.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) said there was a “rumor on the Hill” that Trump planned to fire Mueller at the end of this week. Meanwhile, conservative Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told my colleague Alex Ward recently that Mueller should have been fired “long ago.” Former Attorney General Eric Holder called for protests in the event of Mueller’s firing, and the liberal activist group MoveOn.org has set up a plan for rallies in case it happens.
Now, both Trump and his lawyers say they have no plans to fire Mueller. (The president reiterated that statement Sunday night.) But of course, it’s at least possible that this is a lie, or even that Trump could change his mind later on.
With four former Trump advisers already facing charges in Mueller’s investigation, and the probe apparently moving closer to Trump’s family members and potentially the president himself, the rationale for firing the special counsel might appear clear. And so long as Republicans control Congress, the prospect of Trump actually being impeached and removed from office for this is still a very long shot.
But it’s important to realize that there are also some real, practical reasons for Trump not to fire Mueller. That is: Doing so would cause him several new problems, without entirely solving his old ones.
For one, any attempt to fire Mueller would likely lead to a storm of leaks. For another, he’d have to fire more people than just Mueller to get rid of him. Trump would have to do yet more to actually end the investigation. Perhaps most importantly, the controversy that would ensue would make a Democratic takeover of Congress more likely — which could end up putting Trump and his administration under even more investigative scrutiny.
I of course can’t predict what the president will do in the future, particularly if the legal jeopardy for him and his family members grows more serious. (Though he’s still got that pardon power in his pocket...) But Trump has clearly been reluctant to move against Mueller so far — and that hesitation makes sense for these reasons.
1) Firing Mueller would unleash the leaks
When Trump fired FBI Director James Comey back in May, the eventual consequence was Mueller’s appointment. But it’s also worth remembering what happened in between those two events — namely, a remarkable series of bombshell leaks that made their way to the press.
The leaks were about events both old (Trump’s inappropriate request for Comey’s “loyalty” at a private meeting and his later request that Comey end the investigation into Michael Flynn) and new (Trump’s revelation of classified intelligence to Russian officials in an Oval Office meeting). And they continued after Mueller’s appointment, with the revelation that Jared Kushner sought a back channel to communicate with Russia during the transition.
The sources for these leaks varied. The fired Comey was the ultimate source of some of them, as he tried to get out information he had long sat on. Others were likely leaked by still-serving government officials alarmed by what they saw as a cover-up. And top reporters began digging on these topics even more vigorously after Comey’s firing. But the commonality is that an attempted cover-up unleashed leaks. (We saw a similar situation after Trump got a Justice Department warning that Michael Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail and failed to act on it — the warning leaked into the press weeks later.)
Now, when it comes to Mueller, keep in mind that he and his team have been at work for seven months, and the FBI investigation into Trump associates and Russia was ongoing for months before that. He’s gathered a ton of information in that time — from his two cooperating witnesses George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn, from other people he’s interviewed, from intelligence intercepts, from various subpoenas, and so on. We recently learned that Mueller even obtained the full transition team email accounts of 13 Trump aides.
Basically, Mueller’s team has a lot. We don’t know how much of what they have relates to potential criminality, or how much might just be politically damaging were it to leak. But the gist is that we have reason to believe that any attempt by Trump to cover up or obstruct the investigation would be responded to with some painful leaks.
Read more
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/18/16790278/robert-mueller-fired-trump
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