WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, joined CNN New Day this morning to discuss the Special Counsel Integrity Act, bipartisan legislation that supports the integrity of independent investigations by allowing judicial review if a special counsel is removed. Senator Coons and Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) introduced this bill last week.
“Look, frankly, the president has this situation. If he's concerned about this situation, the only person he has to blame is himself. His repeated threats on Twitter against Attorney General Sessions, his repeated expressions that this Russia investigation is a fabrication, have clearly run into opposition from both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate,” said Senator Coons. “It is in everyone's best interest—the president's and the country's—that Bob Mueller be allowed to continue this investigation to its logical conclusion. If there's nothing there, then that conclusion will be broadly accepted by Republicans and Democrats. If there is something there, then it's in the best interest of the country for it to come to light.”
Full audio and video available here.
Excerpts from the interview:
Senator Coons on the Special Counsel Integrity Act: Well, right now, the reasons why the president, through the attorney general, can't just randomly fired the special counsel, if he has a bad day or gets in a bad mood, is embedded in some regulations in the Department of Justice. What we're doing is taking those standards and putting them into law. So that it's clear that we, as a co-equal branch in the Senate, support checks and balances and the rule of law. Look, frankly, the president has this situation. If he's concerned about this situation, the only person he has to blame is himself. His repeated threats on Twitter against Attorney General Sessions, his repeated expressions that this Russia investigation is a fabrication, have clearly run into opposition from both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. It is in everyone's best interest—the president's and the country's—that Bob Mueller be allowed to continue this investigation to its logical conclusion. If there's nothing there, then that conclusion will be broadly accepted by Republicans and Democrats. If there is something there, then it's in the best interest of the country for it to come to light. And I think this modest step by Senator Tillis and myself, that's mirrored by another bill, that Senators Graham and Booker also introduced, is one way of asserting ourselves as the Senate just as we did with the Russia sanctions bill.
Senator Coons on the bill compared to what already exists in DOJ regulations: We're going further on providing a specific remedy. If the special counsel is fired, he would, within two weeks, can go to a three-judge panel. That panel looks at why he was fired. And if they decide it was an inappropriate firing, they can direct his reinstatement. There isn't currently a clear remedy, and it's not is a swift remedy. But this bill would introduce a clear and swift remedy, which is intended to be a deterrent against this president and future presidents, from an inappropriate firing of a special counsel. This is also a part of just strengthening the Department of Justice and its independence.
Senator Coons on why this would be constitutional: There are ways that the Congress can legislate, that limits executive power. And I do think that in this particular case, what we're doing is simply putting in statute a process that allows a judicial review of whether or not a firing was inappropriate. There are already standards in executive branch regulations for when a firing is or isn't appropriate. This is simply clarifying what the remedy would be.
More on the bill: If the president respects the rule of law and the process, he would direct the deputy attorney general, since the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is recused from this matter. He would direct him to fire the special counsel. Now, the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, has already said publicly, he would not fire Robert Mueller for anything short of cause. So there was concern among some of us in the Senate that he might fire either the attorney general given the tweets that he was issuing a few weeks ago, threatening Jeff Sessions' job or that he might move against Rod Rosenstein. What he can actually do is indirect, under the regulations of the Department of Justice. But the president, because he is the president, has the power to fire people at the Department of Justice, until he finds someone who is willing to override those regulations, and willing to override the traditional independence of the Department of Justice. That's roughly what happened with the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, back in 1973, when President Nixon fired a series of senior Department of Justice officials, until he found someone willing to do his bidding.
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