Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III has let it be known that he’s “considering” the appointment of a second Special Counsel. Not because Robert Mueller needs assistance — that investigation is moving forward smartly. But because Sessions wants to create an overtly partisan investigation into issues that interest Republicans.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is entertaining the idea of appointing a second special counsel to investigate a host of Republican concerns — including alleged wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation and the controversial sale of a uranium company to Russia — and has directed senior federal prosecutors to explore at least some of the matters and report back to him and his top deputy, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post.
Understand that there’s not a single iota of new information suggesting that the Clinton Foundation did the slightest thing wrong. The three Republican-led committees that announced they were going to re-investigate the eight-year-old sale of Uranium One have yet to meet even once. And the rest of the things that might possibly be added to this Special Counsel: Kitchen Sink Edition include such items as was Comey a leaker for revealing his own personal notes and the single most investigated item in American history.
That’s right, a big part of what this new Special Counsel would be empowered to investigate would be ...
... Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state…
Because Republicans desperately, desperately need a smoke screen. In the wake of last week’s massive ass-whoopin’ at the polls, paired with this week’s revelations about Roy Moore, and the ever looming idea that the real storm of the Mueller investigation could break over them at any moment, the idea of creating a Special Counsel to continue the fruitless investigations that Republicans conducted for years sounds like a brilliant plan.
And besides, it would finally put Sessions right with the boss.
President Trump has repeatedly criticized his Justice Department for not aggressively probing a variety of conservative concerns, saying recently that officials there “should be looking at the Democrats.” Sessions’s letter is likely to be seen by some, especially on the left, as an inappropriate bending to political pressure.
The excuse for this exercise in “how can we denigrate the whole idea of justice even further” started with a letter from Republican Congressman Robert Goodlatte, who just last week took a look around and decided this was an excellent time to join the 28 other House Republicans who’ve announced they won’t be looking to come back to their jobs in 2018.
But in Goodlatte’s case, that’s apparently not because he’s concerned about the lack of integrity, decency, or plain old sense by the new team in town.