Unlike previous occasions, where there was at least the fig leaf of criminal activity to justify a special prosecutor or counsel, there was no criminal activity alleged in the brief given to Robert Mueller as Special Counsel other than to investigate the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election -- in essence a national security matter and not one for a special counsel who by statute is only supposed to investigate criminal matters. The fig leaf or justification to go after Nixon in Watergate was a criminal break-in, perjury and obstruction; in Iran-Contra, the violation of the Boland Amendment; with Bill Clinton, it was a fraudulent real estate scheme and perjury; and in the Plame affair, the outing of a CIA agent. But more importantly, these prosecutors had a mandate to investigate a specific criminal matter.
With the powers conveyed to Mueller, this is a criminal investigation looking for a justification. In that sense, it is worse than the investigative abuses of Watergate or Iran-Contra. Never in American history has a prosecutor with unlimited resources and manpower been turned loose on a President and his election campaign to function as a police detective and investigate anything he can claim is remotely tangential or marginally related to his apparent unconstrained mandate.
The voluminous amount of information that will be gathered by the Special Counsel in this setting will be unimaginable. Considering the media and Washington Establishment’s animosity toward Trump, and in today’s world of leaks and innuendos, how is this massive volume of information going to kept confidential? There is little doubt that this information will be leaked and exploited by the opposition party and the media to undermine and destroy the Administration even if there is no criminal activity uncovered by Mueller. This entire process may well end up being the ultimate opposition research for the Democratic Party or in the future when the shoe is on the other foot, perhaps the Republican Party.
Watergate and the Trump Investigation
With the powers conveyed to Mueller, this is a criminal investigation looking for a justification. In that sense, it is worse than the investigative abuses of Watergate or Iran-Contra. Never in American history has a prosecutor with unlimited resources and manpower been turned loose on a President and his election campaign to function as a police detective and investigate anything he can claim is remotely tangential or marginally related to his apparent unconstrained mandate.
The voluminous amount of information that will be gathered by the Special Counsel in this setting will be unimaginable. Considering the media and Washington Establishment’s animosity toward Trump, and in today’s world of leaks and innuendos, how is this massive volume of information going to kept confidential? There is little doubt that this information will be leaked and exploited by the opposition party and the media to undermine and destroy the Administration even if there is no criminal activity uncovered by Mueller. This entire process may well end up being the ultimate opposition research for the Democratic Party or in the future when the shoe is on the other foot, perhaps the Republican Party.
Watergate and the Trump Investigation