Trump Can Fire Mueller, But Not a Grand Jury

[orangecrush]

President Donald Trump appears more determined than ever to fire special counsel Robert Mueller—despite White House protestations to the contrary. Americans must begin to prepare for the constitutional crisis that will ensue.

There is already considerable speculation about how Congress would react to a replay of the Saturday Night Massacre, when President Richard Nixon ordered his attorney general to fire the Watergate special prosecutor. Senators of both parties have warned the president against dismissing Mueller, some in very strong language (dismissal would cross a “red line” or be “explosive”). Members of Congress would no doubt demand an immediate, serious congressional inquiry into the matters the special counsel is investigating, if not impeachment proceedings based on the dismissal itself. But in light of the current level of intense partisan conflict, it seems more likely that Republican leaders in both houses of Congress would allow Mueller to be fired without consequence, and perhaps even defend such a firing.




However, there is another route that may well lead to a showdown between two branches of the government. For months, Mueller and his team have been presenting evidence to a federal grand jury – that grand jury has already indicted two people, and two other former Trump aides have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. (And those are the indictments we know of – others may still be sealed.) We ordinarily think of a grand jury as a “decider of fact,” similar to a trial jury. But a grand jury is actually an investigatory body independent of the prosecutor. The grand jury here could continue its work even past the potential dismissal of Mueller and his entire staff, and indeed could draft indictments of senior White House officials or key staff of the 2016 Trump campaign.



Under the federal rules of criminal procedure, a grand jury is empaneled by a judge and can be discharged only by that judge (or another judge, in case the empaneling judge is removed from the case or is no longer on the bench). Ordinarily, a judge’s decision to discharge a grand jury is ministerial, because the prosecutor defines the grand jury’s “scope of work” – the prosecutor asks the grand jury to issue indictments on particular charges, and the grand jury either does so or doesn’t (though it almost always does, in run-of-the-mill cases). When the grand jury has decided on the charges proposed by the prosecutor, the judge discharges the grand jury.


Whether to permit any of that would be up to Howell, as would a host of other decisions about how to proceed. Indeed, if Mueller turns out to be a latter-day Archibald Cox (the Watergate special prosecutor Nixon ordered fired), then Howell will be today’s counterpart to John Sirica. Sirica, who in 1974 held the same position now held by Howell, was the fiercely independent jurist who ordered Nixon to turn over recordings of Oval Office conversations – in effect, declaring that not even the president is above the law.


https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/14/trump-can-fire-mueller-but-not-a-grand-jury-216975

[raging moderate]

1. DU Rec.

[orangecrush]

2. Thanks!

Just read yesterday it might take up to 6 months for Mueller to get to interview Trump.


https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210227096

IMO, that gives Trumputin way too much time and room to operate.