Watergate vets warn against firing Mueller

Bill Knight column for Thursday, Friday or Saturday, Nov. 9, 10 or 11

After right-wing media demanded the removal of special counsel Robert Mueller from the ongoing investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, a few Republican dutifully introduced a measure to pressure him to quit.

Voices including Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich last week called for dumping Mueller. (Gingrich in May said Mueller was a “superb choice to be special counsel.”)

GOP Congressmen Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Louie Gohmert of Texas on Nov. 3 introduced HR 606 (“Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that Robert Mueller should resign from his special counsel position”). They say Mueller must resign because he was the FBI director in 2010 when U.S. government agencies approved the sale of Uranium One, a Canadian energy company, to a Russian nuclear-energy firm. The deal required approval because Uranium One had U.S. operations.

Conservatives have seized on the Uranium One deal, trying to connect it to Hillary Clinton, who was the Secretary of State then. U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee who wants hearings on the matter, said the U.S. government sold “20 percent of our uranium” to Russia’s nuclear-energy agency Rosatom, a claim repeated by right-wing media. However, the Washington Post fact checker shows that the 20-percent number is misleading, that the transaction was for mining LICENSES for about 20 percent of extraction CAPACITY, and that uranium cannot be exported without a export license, WHICH ROSTOM DOESN’T HAVE.

Plus, Uranium One’s U.S. holdings are less than 20 percent (the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission puts it closer to 10 percent), and, the Post reported, Rosatom “was more interested in the company’s holdings in Kazakhstan, the world’s leading uranium producer.”

Distractions aside, indictments last week of Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates – along with the revelation that Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopolous pleaded guilty to related charges – seemed to panic the White House.

“The walls are closing in,” an unnamed Republican close to top administration staff told the Washington Post. “Everyone is freaking out.”

Meanwhile, people who were involved in the 1970s Watergate investigation recalled President Nixon firing the first Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox in 1973 and lessons to be learned. Republican William Ruckelhaus was Deputy Attorney General of the United States in 1973, when U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson, a fellow Republican, said he’d heard that President Richard Nixon might fire Cox. Ruckelhaus doubted it, saying public opinion would oppose such a move. But it happened, as he reflected this summer in the New York Times.

“Americans would not acquiesce to a president firing a special prosecutor chosen by the Attorney General to investigate possible presidential misconduct,” Ruckelhaus wrote.

“Elliot [Richardson] and I resigned after refusing to carry out President Nixon’s order to fire the special prosecutor,” he said. “Cox was then dismissed by Robert Bork, designated acting Attorney General.

“The resulting public firestorm marked the beginning of the end of the Nixon presidency,” he said. “Congressional support eroded, the House Judiciary Committee began impeachment hearings, and the Supreme Court ordered the release of White House tapes capturing the president and his aides plotting the cover-up.”

An assistant special prosecutor during Watergate, Jill Wine-Banks, in the Chicago Tribune was more forceful.

“The president should understand that his potential use of the pardon and the possible firing or limitation of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation are likely to cause as much backlash as such conduct did during Watergate,” she warned. “Either action could doom Trump's presidency in its relative infancy… Republicans should think hard about how these actions could torpedo the 2018 midterm election for the GOP.

“So, too, I believe any attempt to diminish or damage the reputation of the highly respected Mueller — a Republican — with unsupported allegations of conflicts of interest,” she continued. “Nor should Trump's threat to limit the scope of Mueller's investigation be allowed to stand. The investigation must go where the evidence leads and Trump, who is directly involved in the case, cannot tell a special prosecutor what he can and cannot look into.

“President Trump should think about the public outcry caused by the Saturday Night Massacre,” she added.

Some suggest that if key Republicans – Sens. Susan Collins, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake or John McCain – stood up to the threat and said they’d withhold support for Trump’s agenda, the President and his House brown-nosers may retreat. But that’s not reassuring.

            Ruckelhaus expressed dread at a constitutional crisis.

“Are we headed for another long national nightmare?” he asked. “For the sake of the country, I hope not.”