- St. John of Liverpool
First, there is no guarantee a new investigator would be hired.
Second, even if there was a new investigator it would take time for him/her a while to get up to speed thus slowing the whole process down.
Third, we believe Mueller to be diligent and committed to this task. No telling how competent another person would be.
Fourth, there is more worry about the new AG since he can really put the brakes on the whole thing and not even fire Mueller (see Bricker’s post above).
Fifth, the new AG (Whitaker) is a real piece of work and scary all on his own. He was part of a company scamming people and shut down by the FTC. He also sent a threatening (legal threats) letter to someone who complained about that company. He believes Marbury vs. Madison (which established judicial review) to be one of the worst decisions in the Supreme Court’s history. He also believes the supreme court should is supposed to be an “inferior branch of government” (so forget separate but equal). And he thinksfederal judges should be “people of faith” who take “a biblical view of justice.”
The Votemaster has speculated that Mueller has all the evidence on a memory stick (or ten of them) hidden until he is subpoenaed by the next congress and he will share it with them.
If Whitaker interferes with this investigation (well, let’s be honest, when), we should be clear - this is obstruction of justice. If this isn’t obstruction of justice, then the term “obstruction of justice” has literally no meaning and can be discarded as a useless concept. This is the administration appointing someone for the purpose of derailing an ongoing criminal investigation against them. It should be treated as the attack on the rule of law it is.
Looks like Whitaker probably won’t be able to last long:
I’ve been trying to think who all Trump could get in as AG and while I think that he desperately needs to select someone who is completely corrupt, the system might be against him on this one.
Ultimately, it’s hard to find a criminal compatriot whom you can be sure of the loyalty of. That’s the sort of connection that you build up over time. Maybe if he had put Michael Cohen in as his AG, back when he started, he would have been all set to go. But now he’s stranded in an edifice populated by people he doesn’t know very well, and he’s been stripped of most of his old gang.
To be sure, there probably are options like his sister, Eric Prince, Keith Schiller, etc. but I suspect that he’s already raised those people as candidates for various positions and been told by the Republicans in the Senate that he won’t get the votes. They’re going to force him to nominate someone who isn’t blatantly a thug, and that essentially rules out exactly what Trump needs to find.
But I’m sure he’s trying.
One thing that can happen fairly easily though, in the next couple of months, is for Whitaker to fire a whole bunch of people from the DOJ and hire a whole bunch of new people.
Thanksgiving weekend might be a good time for a purge? People will be too busy being sociable.
I assume a list is already ready, and Rosenstein tops that list. But probably they want to do more than just wait for Thanksgiving. They’ll probably try to create another smokescreen, like the caravan, to help distract things. So they’re probably brainstorming now.