Senate Panel Passes Bill To Protect Robert Mueller From Firing
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Thu, 04/26/2018
While the bill still has little hope of making it past the Senate since Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he won’t bring it up for a vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee has passed a bill to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Trump.
A draft released Wednesday night by Chairman Charles Grassley – who has broken with other Republican leaders in supporting the bill – omitted language that would require Mueller to notify congressional leaders “if there is any change made to the specific nature or scope” of the investigation. With the changes, Democrats on the committee joined Grassley and a handful of other Republicans in a 14-to-7 vote to advance the bill, according to the Washington Post.
The removal of the language was a concession to Democrats, who had worried that including the language would essentially create an opportunity for Republicans allied with the president to tip him off about any new developments in the probe.
Given the opposition, some members of the Judiciary Committee had proposed scaling back the bill into a simple “sense of the Senate” resolution offering support for Mueller, but stopping short of preventing the president from firing him.
Of course, opposition to the bill isn’t limited to the Senate. House Republicans have zero appetite to bring the bill to a vote even if it does somehow clear the Senate, and President Trump would almost certainly veto it if it arrives on his desk.
Lawmakers’ push to provide another layer of protection for Mueller gained new traction after the FBI raided the home and office of Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a reputed Trump Organization dealmaker.
As the Washington Post reports, two Republican senators considered offering an amendment that would offer support for Mueller while being careful not to infringe on the president’s constitutional authority.
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