With everything going on with Trump, I thought it would be helpful to ask those dopers with legal expertise about special prosecutors. Who has the authority to appoint one? Would it be the AG, the whole Senate, the House, or the judiciary committees? Is there a difference between a special prosecutor or an independent investigation?
The AG has the power to appoint a special prosecutor. Because Sessions is recused, the task falls to Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein.
A special prosecutor is just a prosecutor outside the normal chain-of-command of the DOJ. He or she gets to make decisions about investigation without the normal approvals. However, charging decisions would still ultimately be approved by DAG Rosenstein.
An independent prosecutor is a different beast. That prosecutor need not seek AG approval for charging. However, that would require Congress to pass a statute to create the office, which Trump would have to sign (or have Congress override his veto).
Here in Minnesota (and probably many US States), any County Attorney can appoint another attorney to act as prosecutor. It’s commonly done when there is a perception that the County Attorney or his office might be biased. Also sometimes where the case needs special expertise in a field. I’ve heard of cases involving complicated economic fraud where the County Attorney hired a legal firm specializing in bankruptcy-type cases to prosecute the case.
I was involved in a case where there were allegations fellow against elected officials of the County Attorney – he asked the County Attorney of a neighboring county to conduct the investigation & prosecute any ensuing charges.
It’s also become common to request an outside prosecutor in cases charging police brutality – the claim is that prosecutors work with local police so often on cases that they can’t be impartial when investigating one of those same police. So a prosecutor from outside the area is sometimes appointed. But it’s entirely the decision of the County Attorney to appoint one, and I presume he could un-appoint that person at any time.