Massacre?
Last night a Twitter pal speculated that what we might be seeing with Bill Barr’s departure is a sort of “slow-motion Saturday Night Massacre.” We still don’t know why Barr resigned/was fired but it’s been reported that he was “unlikely” to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden. Maybe Trump demanded it and Barr told him no, which meant Barr had to go. Next week the deputy AG, Jeffrey Rosen, will take over for Barr. If Trump makes the same demand of him, does he resign too? That would make Richard Donoghue the new acting AG. What will he do if Trump tells him to appoint a special counsel? Elliott Richardson and William Ruckelshaus quit in a matter of hours when Nixon demanded they fire Archibald Cox, but the Trump version could play out over several weeks. If you believe this AP story, the stars are beginning to align. There’s one big difference between the Saturday Night Massacre and what Trump’s doing, though: Appointing a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden would be… quite defensible. Special counsels operate with greater independence than standard DOJ prosecutors do, which is what you’d want when probing the finances of the president’s son. It’s a signal to the public that the matter is being pursued diligently, without fear or favor. It may even be that Biden’s own Attorney General will end up making the appointment himself, to show the public that no special breaks will be given to anyone just because they’re relatives or cronies of the new president. I continue to think Team Joe is secretly *hoping* Trump’s AG appoints a special counsel, as that would take this thorny issue out of their hands and make it easy for rank-and-file Democrats to complain that it’s political persecution, not a justifiable criminal investigation. Which brings us back to the mystery of why Barr is allegedly opposed to making the appointment. And whether Rosen might be any less opposed. President Donald Trump is considering pushing to have a special counsel appointed to advance a federal tax investigation into the son of President-elect Joe Biden, setting up a potential showdown with incoming acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen… Beyond appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the younger Biden, the sources said Trump is interested in having another special counsel appointed to look into his own baseless claims of election fraud. But if he’s expecting his newly named acting attorney general to go further than Barr on either matter, he could end up quickly disappointed… Trump is still weighing his options, considering whether to pressure Rosen to make the special counsel appointment or, if needed, to replace the acting attorney general with someone more likely to carry out his wishes.
