Former FBI Director Robert Mueller (center) is surrounded by security and staff as he leaves a meeting with senators at the US Capitol June 21, 2017, in Washington, DC. As the special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections, Mueller was on Captiol Hill to meet with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Congress has options for protecting Robert Mueller and his special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian election interference, even if bipartisan legislation designed to prevent Mueller from being fired by the Trump administration fails to become law or is struck down by the courts.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, September 26, a panel of constitutional scholars gave differing opinions on whether two bills that would require a judicial review of a Justice Department decision to sack Mueller or any other special counsel would survive legal challenges, if Congress manages to pass them in the first place.
Lawmakers introduced the bills in August after Trump unleashed angry tweets and other comments that left pundits wondering if the president would order the Justice Department to oust Mueller, just as the president fired former FBI Director James Comey. Trump has since said that he wouldn’t dismiss Mueller, although observers say the unpredictable president may change his mind once the investigation gets closer to him, his family and his business empire.
Trump can’t fire Mueller himself, but he could order Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — or the acting head of the Justice Department, should Rosenstein resign — to fire Mueller. Both the attorney general and the deputy attorney general resigned after President Nixon made orders to fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal in 1973.
Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham and several Democrats introduced the first bill aimed at protecting Mueller, which would…