LISA GILBERT: We are very concerned that the removal of Sessions happened so quickly. The person that was put in is so unqualified, potentially unconstitutionally appointed and clearly biased on that last point. He is the only potential candidate that Trump could have found who was within the DOJ who was so clearly already out there with a blueprint for how to undermine the Mueller investigation. In some ways, he was interviewing for his job at the DOJ by writing about his plan to defund the investigation and then to rein it in – on CNN or the Wall Street Journal – speaking about it on television. So there’s no question that Trump knew his pre-existing perspectives on the damage that the Mueller probe was doing to Trump and his family. That bias is very concerning.
The fact that he shouldn’t even been put in at all because the deputy AG is still there and that’s the line of succession. Rod Rosenstein should become AG, so there are real constitutional questions. And, then above all, the sort of ongoing just corruption allegations that we’ve seen about this man, you know, that is what makes him unqualified — the wrongdoing he’s done in the past. So for all these reasons, we triggered a rapid response network around the country because we thought that this was just unacceptable.
So we were, you know, of course, concerned that we were asking activists to turn out right after an election season where so many of them had done so much and fought so hard for their preferred candidates and done a GOTV for months. So we have a host of exhausted people and we’re going to ask them to turn out and organize rallies around the country. It was certainly a questionable prospect.
But, what we proved is that the American public really gets that it’s not okay to violate the rule of law. And we were overwhelmed and thrilled at the outcome that we received: a thousand rallies in every state. A hundred thousand people turning out and people just showed that this is something that matters to them and they’re not going to take attacks on the Mueller investigation lying down.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Given the fact that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker has stated he’s not going to recuse himself, what could the incoming Democratic control the House of Representatives do to protect the Mueller probe from Matt Whitaker, if he follows through on his published and televised comments of his antipathy towards Mueller and his probe?
LISA GILBERT: Well, there are a number of things that they can do. Some of them can be undertaken before the Democrats take control of the House. And some of them can only happen when the Dems have the tools of oversight that they will gain starting in January. But in the meantime, both chambers should immediately pass the legislation – the bipartisan legislation – that would protect Bob Mueller, the bill that moved through the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year, has been introduced in both chambers and simply says that Mueller cannot be fired without cause. So that’s something that we just need to put in place to make sure that he is protected.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Still further, we’d like to see additional legislation put in place which would insulate Mueller, protect him if Whitaker stays in place, or if there’s another attorney general who also wants to undermine the probe, Mueller should be given independence and insulated and given the choice to release the report if he writes one, in his own time.
LISA GILBERT: There’s a real precedent for this in the Watergate situation. When Archibald Cox was fired, Leon Jaworski was brought in. Robert Bork, who was the current AG at the time, issued an executive order to protect Leon Jaworski, to insulate him and say that he had complete independence and Mueller could be given those same protections. So those are two things we’d like to see happen legislatively or through executive order, which can happen anytime. Obviously we’ll have a better chance come January. And then in addition, in January, we’d like to see strong oversight if Whitaker is still there. He needs to be the first witness that Nadler calls in the Judiciary Committee in the House.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Just to drill down a bit on what you talked about, there have been scenarios that if Matt Whitaker – or some other Trump ally’s head of the Department of Justice – there could be an effort to suppress any final report that comes out of the Mueller investigation. If that happens, there are many legal scholars out there who talk about a constitutional crisis. If the DOJ and the Trump White House basically say we’re going to lock away this Mueller report and no one will ever see it, that will certainly abrogate what I think a majority of the nation feels should be done in terms of a full fair and open investigation of what the president and his campaign did or did not do in terms of collusion with the Russians during the 2016 election.
LISA GILBERT: So that’s completely right. And there’s a reason that our fourth red line for our citizen activists is that exact thing. If the Mueller report is suppressed; if there isn’t transparency in the findings, one thing is for sure the public is very deserving of the final explanation of what happened. We’ve all watched the circus of the last two years and seen endless denials, claims of no collusion from the president. We deserve to know what Mueller has found and we’ve seen the pretty impressive track record from what is public, the litany of indictments and charges. And so we need to know the rest and I think are entitled to see it. If we don’t, I imagine there will be massive outrage and certainly the House will use all of the tools that they have to call for answers.
