Steve Bannon, the erstwhile chief strategist and policy advisor to President Donald Trump, told USA Today that there is “zero chance” that the president will fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the former FBI director tasked with investigating the administration’s alleged ties to Moscow.
“There is zero chance Trump will fire Mueller,” Bannon insisted during an interview with the national newspaper. “It won’t happen. Zero chance. And he shouldn’t.”
Zip. Zero. Nil
Appointed in May 2017 to explore charges that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, Mueller has issued more than 30 indictments for charges ranging from lying to the FBI to financial fraud. Despite filing more than 200 criminal charges, the special counsel has so far failed to uncover any evidence of the type of wrongdoing it was established to expose.
“With the Mueller investigation, to me, you just have to roll with it,” Bannon said. “I think it’s gone off on tangents, but the Mueller investigation is the Mueller investigation.”
Mueller’s appointment orders, signed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, established the scope of the special counsel’s authority and direct him to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russians government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” However, a second, more controversial clause of this document states that “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” are also Mueller’s prerogative, explaining the “tangents” to which Bannon was referring.
Trump recently fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who previously recused himself from the Russia probe, and replaced Rosenstein with the new acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker. Writing in 2017, Whitaker argued that “investigating Donald Trump’s finances or his family’s finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign and allegations that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government or anyone else.”
Repeated assurances
With Whitaker providing oversight of the special counsel until a permanent attorney general is appointed, Bannon is correct to assume that Mueller’s job is safe. In fact, Mueller’s job was never really imperiled, despite the hysterical reports from the mainstream media.
“If the past is any guide—and the question here is whether it is—perhaps we should calm down,” wrote Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith, citing “five major times in the last 10 or so months” when liberals in Washington and the press “announce that the United States is on the verge of a constitutional crisis” because Trump may fire Mueller.
Goldsmith points to multiple occasions when people close to the president have felt compelled to reassure Democrats that their investigative house of cards would not come tumbling down. Besides Bannon, White House Counsel Ty Cobb, former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow, White House advisor Kellyanne Conway and former Press Secretary Sean Spicer have all felt obliged at one moment or another to remind the left that Trump harbors no plans to fire Mueller.
Finally, Bannon is convinced that if Republicans had retained a majority in the House, Democrats never would have accepted a special counsel report that exonerated Trump. He expects Democratic lawmakers to challenge Mueller’s findings when his investigation is concluded, which Mueller believes could happen in the next month.
“I’ve said this from day one: If we kept the House of Representatives, the report was going to be meaningless,” he predicted. “If you lose the House, then it’s used as a basis to review an appeasement process. It’s a political thing now.”
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