Updates | The Week of June 12, 2017
Derek Reinbold // 6/18/17 //
Special counsel Robert Mueller has requested interviews with high-ranking intelligence officials, suggesting that he will investigate whether President Trump obstructed justice (NYT).
- Obstruction of justice is a difficult charge to prove, but if reported facts are true, there is a strong case against President Trump, argue Daniel Hemel and Eric Posner in a New York Times Op-ed.
- Ken Starr, the former independent counsel investigating Bill Clinton, disagrees (The Hill)
- A majority of Americans think President Trump tried to interfere into the Russia investigation (The Hill).
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating possible obstruction of justice by President Trump (NPR, The Hill, WaPo).
The reaction of the legal community and the media to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s potential firing is helping to break down political norms, argues Dahlia Lithwick.
As the existence of White House tapes remains uncertain, Zachary Price questions the value of recordings as evidence (Take Care).
The Senate Intelligence Committee has announced plans to investigate the circumstances of President Trump’s firing of former FBI director James Comey (ABA Journal).
Former FBI director James Comey’s Senate testimony is indicative of the need for strong whistleblower protections, argues Jason Zuckerman at ACS Blog.
In Vox, Dara Lind argues that the Trump administration’s relationship to Russian interference is still scandalous even if no clear evidence of collusion is found, because the administration has behaved unethically in attempting to prevent the truth of Russian interference from being discovered.
President Trump will likely be impeached if Democrats win back the House of Representatives in 2018, writes Jonah Goldberg in National Review.
Preet Bharara on Sunday said that President Trump’s efforts to cultivate a relationship with him made him uncomfortable prior to his March firing (WaPo, WSJ).
Although President Trump has the authority to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, he has a legal duty not to do so for the purposes of obstructing justice, a distinction too often missed, notes Scott Shapiro at Balkinization.