What happens if Trump fires Mueller?

Would giving Mueller the axe change anything? Or would congressional Republicans continue to look away?

Donald Trump points
(Image credit: Getty Images)

President Trump has spent his tenure in office shattering norms of presidential conduct, and his disdain for legal restraints may be about to reach another level. The possibility that Trump will fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller is becoming very real, and there's no doubt that, at the very least, Trump is actively trying to undermine Mueller's investigation. The fact that an unprecedentedly corrupt president is interfering with a critical investigation into his own financial practices and his campaign's apparent collusion with Russia in the 2016 elections constitutes a major threat to the rule of law. But we should remember that the Constitution provides a remedy that could address Trump's lawlessness. The problem is that congressional Republicans are abdicating their oversight responsibilities for partisan reasons.

The threat that Trump might fire Muller is clear. In a remarkable interview with The New York Times last week, Trump said that "a special counsel should never have been appointed." More strikingly, he said that if Attorney General Jeff Sessions "was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else." The belief that the attorney general owes personal loyalty to the president demonstrates the difference between a president who respects the rule of law and one who does not. And given that Trump has already fired FBI Director James Comey to obstruct the investigation into Russia's electoral interference, it's not a huge stretch to think that Mueller might be next.

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Scott Lemieux

Scott Lemieux is a professor of political science at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, N.Y., with a focus on the Supreme Court and constitutional law. He is a frequent contributor to the American Prospect and blogs for Lawyers, Guns and Money.