Whatever special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of investigators find out about President Trump, Russia, collusion and dossier gossip may never make it into the public domain.
While the tight-lipped Mr. Mueller apparently moves ever closer to a direct confrontation with Mr. Trump, a pointed legal argument has broken out over whether and how the special prosecutor and former FBI director can make his findings known. Options range from a full-on, tell-all report to a bare-bones summary of findings delivered privately to his Justice Department bosses.
Precedents from previous special prosecutors have been all over the map on disclosure, from the highly detailed report prepared by Ken Starr against Bill Clinton to far more modest disclosures. Which direction the former FBI director takes, legal scholars say, ultimately depends on how he imagines his role as special counsel and his reading of the updated statute regarding the work of special counsels.
With Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused from the investigation, the report would go to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who selected Mr. Mueller. A second major question mark in the law involves what happens next. The statute says Mr. Rosenstein can override the confidentiality restriction if that “would be in the public interest, to the extent that release would comply with applicable legal restrictions.”
Mr. Rosenstein then would have to weigh several factors, including the “traditionally confidential nature of criminal investigations that don’t result in an indictment; the longstanding Department of Justice policy against public revelations; his own distaste for disclosure; and the likely dramatic effect on the government that public release of the report will cause,” Ross Garber, a specialist in government investigations at the Connecticut law firm of Shipman & Goodwin, wrote recently in the Los Angeles Times. – READ MORE
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