Trump denies report he tried to fire special counsel Mueller

Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE), and Sens. The original bills were introduced last summer.

Mr Grassley refused to consider a pair of Bills released past year to protect the special counsel before they were merged into one. He has said in the past he wanted the two bills to be reconciled before the committee could consider it.

Grassley’s office did not return a request for comment on whether he would support the legislation or hold a vote in committee.

Responding to Trump’s comments on the special counsel and reports that he has sought to remove him from the Russian Federation investigation, a group of bipartisan senators introduced legislation this week to limit the president’s ability to fire Mueller, The Hill reported.

The White Residence hit once more on Thursday in opposition to a report that President Trump is considering forgoing an interview with Explicit Counsel Robert Mueller’s group in light of the raid on the office and residential of Trump’s personal lawyer earlier this week.

The bill, titled the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act, would ensure that special counsels can only be fired in writing by a Senate-confirmed attorney general, or, if the attorney general is recused from the investigation, the next highest-ranking, Senate-confirmed official at the Department of Justice who isn’t recused. The mass protest would also be triggered if Trump moved to replace the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein – which could clear a path for Mueller to be fired – or if Trump pardoned key witnesses in the Russian Federation investigation.

Under the bill, the expedited review would determine whether the special counsel was sacked for good cause and write into law existing Justice Department regulations that say a special counsel can only be fired for good cause by an existing Justice official. “Did they find his recordings?”

Booker and Graham also proposed a bill that would require Justice Department requests to fire special counsels to be approved by a judge.

This week, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided the offices of Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, reportedly while searching for documents related to alleged affairs the president had.

President Trump is reportedly less interested in a special counsel interview since the raid.

“And we have a very important responsibility – in fact, more important than ever – to protect the special counsel” he said. “This is not something precipitous, this is something we’ve been working on”.

Still, there was no immediate sign that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., planned to bring such legislation to the floor, or that such a bill could pass in the Republican-controlled House.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday that the President “certainly believes he has the power” to fire him. It will assure that the Democrats will regain control of both the House and the Senate in this coming November elections.

“Trump can not directly fire Mueller”, said Andrew Kent, a professor at Fordham Law School. “I think it would provoke some sort of reaction by Congress”. Mike Rounds said of the bill.

“If the President were to fire the Deputy Attorney-General, that would be an extraordinary crisis and a real problem”, she said.

Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar, who has warned against trying to legislate protection for Mueller, told CNN on Thursday that it is hard to reconcile the “inferior” constitutional status of the special counsel with the “independence” envisioned in legislation that would allow him to challenge the executive’s power to dismiss him.

“He’d (Mr Trump) have to fire Rosenstein first”, said Senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. The official said the document was no longer redacted, except for “narrowly tailored” redactions to protect the name of a foreign country and foreign agent that, if revealed, could undermine “the trust we have with this foreign nation”.

Still other experts emphasize that Rosenstein is not supervising Mueller in his role as deputy attorney general, he’s doing it as the acting attorney general.

Some Republicans have also come out with dire warnings.