Speculative Commentary on Mueller Team’s Motives and Presidential Power Conflict

As the President, by nature and design, tries to claim aggressive new powers, the Mueller team, almost in equal proportion, is trying to limit the theory of Presidential power and, even, to criminalize an expansive exercise of those powers. People who know and have worked with Mueller find it, at best, unexpected that this traditional by the book G-man would be pursuing such far-reaching legal theories. But one possible explanation, shared by many in the White House, is that Mueller is overly reliant on his staff— in fact, is being led by his number two, Andrew Weissmann. Weismann has a longstanding reputation for aggression: he was the prosecutor whose pursuit of the accounting firm Arthur Anderson in the Enron debacle ended in its conviction—a judgment reversed well after the firm's bankruptcy and dissolution. One White House advisor likened him to Victor Hugo's obsessed policeman Inspector Javert—a prosecutor consumed with taking down the President. Indeed, Weissmann, who has in the past contributed to Democratic candidates, is a particular bet noir and favorite whipping boy for the White House his central role in the Mueller investigation taken there as evidence of a deep bias against Donald Trump. But in another view it is precisely because Mueller, a former Marine, is so by the book and Semper Fi that he finds Trump's behavior to be personally offensive, and, on its face, corrupt. "Bob Mueller is all about limits and rules. Donald Trump has none and acknowledges none," said one lawyer who has worked with Mueller in the past. It may yet be even a more profound clash then that, the executive branch at war with itself—the Justice Department against the White House. In this, the President's almost daily tirades against the DOJ, the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, the Deputy Attorney General, Rosenstein, the former head of the FBI, Comey, and his former deputy, Andrew McCabe, are part of an effort to obstruct justice and save himself. The Mueller strategy (or Weissmann strategy) is a war strategy, in the view of some legal observers. An indictment of the President would be litigated to the hilt. It would force both the substantive issues of obstruction and abuse of power and the meta issues of Presidential immunity—in essence, the President's claims to being above the law— into open court for a long and painful review and dissection that might shadow the November election. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030253