Washington
The rules were put in place nearly 20 years ago to cope with what the Justice Department called the “extraordinary circumstances of an investigation into possible crimes or corruption which could involve the president — the one official in whom the Constitution vests ‘the executive power.’ ”
Given the obvious sensitivity, the regulations sought to insulate special counsels by providing that they “may be disciplined or removed only by the personal action of the attorney general” and only for specified reasons, such as misconduct or conflict of interest.
In the current inquiry by special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump has repeatedly signaled he wants it to end.
And if Trump is really determined and willing to take the political heat, some legal experts say, the carefully crafted rules designed to protect the independent counsel may not be enough to restrain him.
“The bottom line is that President Trump has the raw power to fire Mueller — despite it being a catastrophically bad decision that should lead to his impeachment,” said Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general and the lead author of the 1999 Justice Department special counsel rules.
The current special counsel system is a legacy of both the Watergate scandal in the 1970s and the Clinton impeachment in the late 1990s.
President Richard Nixon decided to resign in 1974 under pressure from Republican senators rather than fight his impeachment in the House.
Afterward, a wary Congress passed a new law with high hopes of heading off another such constitutional crisis. The law authorized the attorney general to turn to a panel of judges who in turn would choose an “independent counsel” to investigate the White House in future cases.