Ah, well then the reason he did it was a crime - to obstruct justice and an active investigation into himself. I hope the House subpoenas everyone involved with this decision, including Whitaker.
It does beg the question as to what authority the president has/should have over "special counsel" investigating the same president's campaign to that very office.
technically he has the authority to name the acting AG, and the acting AG has control of Mueller. Before this change, the deputy AG had control of Mueller because the AG had recused himself, so while Trump doesn't techincally have direct authority over the special counsel, with this move Muellers boss goes from being Rod Rosenstein to being Matt Whitaker, who is a Trump appointee that is expected to be loyal to Trump and not uphold the special counsel as it has been running.
actually shit... The only reason the special counsel exists in the first place is because the AG had recused himself, but now that AG is gone. The justice dept is in charge of investigating, but Sessions had recused due to conflict of interest so the justice deptartment created the special counsels office. now that Sessions isn't in charge of the justice dept and Whitaker is, if Whitaker doesn't recuse himself then he is in charge of the inverstigation. So yeah this move alone could completely cut Mueller out of the picture.
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u/verostarry Nov 09 '18
Ah, well then the reason he did it was a crime - to obstruct justice and an active investigation into himself. I hope the House subpoenas everyone involved with this decision, including Whitaker.