Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The Hill/Getty.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is considering forming a 2nd special counsel to investigate several Clinton family issues. The Hill. The probe could cover several different issues, including the Clinton Foundation, the Uranium One scandal, the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's e-mail server and the Obama unmasking scandal. The Justice Department is already looking into these issues and more and may set up prosecution. The 2nd special council will have a different mandate from Robert Mueller's special counsel which has focused on supposed election interference.
My Comment:
Very big news if true. And news that is likely to boost the opinions of both Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump. One of Trump supporters biggest complaints was that nothing was being done about these obvious stories of corruption and graft. Sessions went from being one of the most beloved of Trump's supporters to being one of the most disliked. Finally doing something will silence Session's biggest critics. And it will of course help Trump as well. One of his campaign promises was to "Lock Her Up".
Why is a 2nd special counsel necessary? Well, Muller's only covers election interference. Though a special counsel can go outside of their mandate, see Paul Manafort, the Clinton and Obama administration scandals are pretty far away from his mandate. Even though Muller's investigation trended towards Clinton lackeys like John and Tony Podesta it seems that the major players aren't going down from that investigation.
A 2nd special counsel would be able to investigate these scandals. And they are all huge scandals. The Clinton Foundation was basically a giant money laundering and corruption scheme and needs to be broken up. The Uranium One scandal is a huge deal and James Comey did some pretty shady stuff as well. Worst of all was the Obama unmasking scandal that violated Trump and his family's civil rights.
Still, we should temper our hopes. I think that we can't assume that everyone is going to go down. Former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton will almost certainly be spared. It would be unprecedented to arrest a former president and I doubt that Trump would want to sully the name of the office of President by sending two of them to prison. Much like Ford pardoned Nixon, I think that Trump will give the former POTUS's a pass.
Other people won't be so lucky. It would be very unlikely that Hillary Clinton doesn't at least get charged with something. It might be a slap on the wrist and she probably won't serve any time but I expect her to get charged and plead guilty to something.
James Comey is likely going down as well. His handling of the Clinton e-mail scandal was, by all accounts, horrible. It might even have been criminal and I wouldn't be surprised if he gets charged too. I also expect quite a number of Obama administration and Democratic workers to go down as well.
I am almost expecting a big announcement tomorrow when Trump returns from Asia. There have been rumors flying for awhile now that there would be an earth shaking announcement from Trump on criminal prosecution of high ranking Democrat officials. A lot has been made of the high number of sealed indictments in Federal Court and people are trying to connect the dots. This statement from Sessions isn't quite there but it does give credence to those rumors. Time will tell if those rumors are true or not.
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