Adam Schiff, who has routinely claimed in the past that firing a special counsel would be obstruction of justice, was front and center to flaunt his absolute shamelessness.
Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff floated the idea that President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for attorney general could, and perhaps should, end special counsel John Durham’s inquiry into the Trump-Russia investigators just hours after Attorney General William Barr made the appointment public.
Schiff, who prioritized protecting special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Trump’s attorneys general, nevertheless repeatedly suggested that Biden’s yet-to-be-named chief law enforcement officer could end the Durham investigation.
“The appointment is not consistent with the language of the statute that he’s relying on and can be rescinded, I think, by the next attorney general. I would presume the next attorney general will look to see if there is any merit to the work that John Durham is doing and make a rational decision about whether that should continue at any level,” Schiff said during a Tuesday appearance on MSNBC’s The Beat, later adding that “I think the next attorney general will have every opportunity to examine, to repeal, or to allow the investigation to continue if the next attorney general thinks there is anything, any part of it that has any merit.”
Schiff is citing the language that the special counsel should be appointed from outside the government, yet that’s not actually consistent with how that language has been previously applied. For this purpose, prosecutors within the DOJ have not been considered “in the government.” Other special counsels, including Durham himself back in 2008, have come from within the Justice Department. Regardless, here’s the thing about DOJ regulations. The DOJ gets to make them. They are not legally binding documents that can’t be changed by the Attorney General to fit the current situation. What Schiff thinks about such changes is wholly irrelevant, and any targeting of Durham by the House will be seen for what it is, i.e. blatantly political.
Further, Schiff has made it clear in dealing with the Mueller investigation that a special counsel should never be fired for most any reason, much less by a political opponent, of which any Democrat, including Joe Biden’s pick for Attorney General, clearly is. Why the flip-flop? The simple answer is that Schiff does not want this investigation to continue. There is no principle behind it, nor any sense of consistency. The rules always change when it comes to trying to protect Democrats.
As Chuck Grassley notes, Republicans (for better or worse) mostly capitulated to the Mueller investigation, even seeking to protect it. That same standard should apply to Durham, whose distinguished DOJ career makes him far less of a political actor than Mueller and his team were.