Impeachment proceedings against Trump

Justice Department Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Request

Attorney General William Barr testified before a House Appropriations subcommittee regarding the the fiscal year 2020 budget request for the Justice Department. Many lawmakers asked the attorney general about his handling of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which had not yet been made public. Mr. Barr promised to have the redacted report released within a week, and detailed how the report would be redacted and for what reasons. Lawmakers also asked about various Justice Department programs and their funding, including civil rights, voting rights, and the Violence Against Women Act.

towermonkey wrote: Yes, and because it was released in full, the democrats passed rules about releasing special counsel reports that Barr is now following. You either follow the rules or not.

The fundamental legal difference between the Starr and Mueller probes has to do with the law governing the process of investigating a president for potential criminal wrongdoing.

Starr acted pursuant to a statute passed by Congress. Called the Ethics and Government Act of 1978, the law authorized Starr to send information he collected to the United States Congress and to provide recommendations related to impeachment of the person under investigation.

The Supreme Court upheld the statute as constitutional despite its creation of a prosecutor who didn’t answer to the president — the boss of all federal prosecutors under Article II of the Constitution. The law lapsed in 1999.

What replaced it was not a statute, but a regulation. A regulation is a rule with the power of law created by an agency instead of Congress. Regulations are constitutionally problematic because they are not passed by Congress, but by the executive branch. Most of the time, regulations must be promulgated pursuant to what’s known as the notice-and-comment process, which requires that agencies get the public’s input before they become law.

The regulation governing special counsel Robert Mueller was created internally by DOJ lawyers who report to the president.

Here’s the irony: The two functional barriers to holding a president accountable for wrongdoing short of impeachment under the current legal regime — i.e., the “no indictment” rule and the “confidential report” rule — were both created by people within the chain of command to the Executive Office of the President.

In sum, Starr tells the story of a prosecutor charged with investigating a president who fails to define his role with precision and avoid becoming swept up in the politics of impeachment. And there is every reason to believe, and to hope, that Robert Mueller will not make the same mistakes.

On Tuesday Kerr tweeted, “Imagine if the Starr Report had been provided only to President Clinton’s Attorney General, Janet Reno, who then read it privately and published a 4-page letter based on her private reading stating her conclusion that President Clinton committed no crimes.”