One of the fallouts of the furor surrounding President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey has been calls by Senate Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, for the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Democrats are pretty sure that Comey was getting too close to some imagined conspiracy between Trump and Vladimir Putin. Hence the president fired the FBI Director. The theory is ludicrous because the FBI investigation will proceed apace no matter who is running the Bureau.
Special counsels have always been unpredictable
The Trump Administration and congressional Republicans are, understandably, leery of having a special counsel take over the probe. Traditionally special counsels, or as they are sometimes called special prosecutors, have a virtually unlimited brief and have used it to make life a living hell for the administrations which they are investigating. The original “Saturday Night Massacre,” to which the firing of Comey is being unartfully compared, took place because of President Nixon’s frustration over the Watergate special prosecutor. On the other side of the political spectrum, Whitewater special counsel Ken Starr was savaged by the media and other supporters of President Bill Clinton who were appalled at the length and breadth of his investigation into various misdeeds of the then president.
In the former case, the Watergate investigation led to President Nixon’s resignation. In the latter case, President Clinton became only the second American president in history to be impeached. Democrats, by the way, were successful in preventing the appointment of a special counsel to investigate President Obama’s various alleged misdeeds.
What about a special counsel for Hillary Clinton?
Hot Air has a mischievous proposal for a compromise. The article suggests that Trump and the Republicans agree to an appointment of a special counsel to delve into alleged contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians. In return, the Democrats must agree to a second special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton, her email server, and the reason Comey decided not to recommend she be indicted, even though her various misdeeds that he listed during the now infamous July 2016 press conference suggested to many legal experts that she should have been prosecuted.
The second special counsel would also look into the secret meeting between former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch that occurred days before Comey’s press conference. Knowing how such investigations have gone historically, one can just imagine what rocks it would turn over and who might be caught in its web. One can only imagine how the Democrats would react to such a suggestion.
