By Brendan Kirby, LifeZette
A steady drumbeat of liberal commentators for months has been predicting — hoping? — that President Donald Trump will fire independent counsel Robert Muller, but a man who knows a thing or two about the jobs said Thursday it won’t happen.
Ken Starr, who served as special prosecutor during the Whitewater probe that eventually led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment over lying about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, said on “The Ingraham Angle” that he doubts Trump will oblige his critics.
“I don’t know what it’s about, but it’s a cul-de-sac, because the president, I don’t think, is going to fire Bob Mueller,” he said. “He’s being advised to. Some folks, very wrongheadedly, are saying, ‘You need to fire Bob Muller.’ Bad advice. It’s the wrong thing to do. But I don’t think the president is going to fall for it.”
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller earlier this year to investigate allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign. The investigation has netted two guilty pleas and indictments against two other former campaign officials.
So far, however — despite breathless speculation — no evidence has emerged that Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia or did anything illegal.
Despite repeated assurances from Trump’s lawyers and administration officials, Democrats and liberal media commentators have ramped up speculation that Trump will bring the axe down on Mueller.
Doing so would raise obvious parallels with then-President Richard Nixon’s infamous firing of Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox.
“It would just be terrible,” Starr said. “We don’t need another ‘Saturday Night Massacre.’”
Starr said that in May, he opposed the appointment of an independent counsel.
“We over-criminalize so much of life and our politics together,” he said. “We need to stop that.”
Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that liberals have been wrong about Trump’s travel ban, which the Supreme Court appears poised to uphold; wrong about Trump’s supposed violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which a federal judge rejected Thursday; and many other things.
“It’s not because I’m smarter than they are that I’ve been right and they’ve been wrong,” he said. “It’s they put hope over reality.”
Dershowitz said the Trump team has Mueller where they want him. The former FBI director has been dinged by some of his strong-armed tactics and by questions over the partisan leanings of his staff lawyers, many of whom have made political contributions to Democrats.
“Both sides are playing the refs,” he said. “But I think the Trump side is playing them smarter. What they’re doing is keeping the pressure on Mueller. They’re questioning his integrity. They’re challenging whether he had conflicts of interest.”
Starr said it would be a mistake to appoint a second special counsel, as some Republicans have suggested, to look into the Uranium One deal that gave a Russian firm control over 20 percent of U.S. uranium reserves during the previous administration.
But Starr added the multiyear process that led to approval by the U.S. government is wrought with questions that should be answered. He noted that “enormous gifts” flowed to the Clinton Foundation during that time.
“Gifts kept coming in from these senior officials from this company … I’m very deeply troubled by the timing, including President Clinton’s speech for a half a million dollars in Russia, the Russia connection,” he said.
This article was used with permission from LifeZette.
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