A little over a week ago, Trump’s attorney Rudy Guiliani said that the basis of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was illegitimate and he was absolutely correct.
Instead of discussing presidential pardons or subpoenas, President Trump and his legal team would do well to focus on the legitimacy of the entire investigation because it is truly a house of cards built on a foundation of air.
The Mueller investigation began on a series of rumors, innuendoes, an unproven dossier funded by political opposition, apparent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses, illegally leaked memos by a self-aggrandizing former FBI director, and the firing of said director based on a memo written by the person who then appointed the special counsel and still oversees him.
Only in a town like Washington, well-insulated from common sense and the real world, would any of this seem fine.
The investigation was spun up with the firing of James Comey. President Trump had the legal authority to fire Comey for any reason, whether it was his gross mishandling of the Clinton email investigation or just for being too tall. We know from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s letter that Comey’s firing was justified beyond the simple fact that every member of the executive branch serves at the pleasure of the head of the executive branch.
Comey’s flat refusal to acknowledge publicly — until he was testifying under oath — that the president was not under investigation for any potential Russia collusion meant the rumor mill was allowed to swirl and detract from the administration’s positive work. This allowed Comey’s his minions to leak to the media false information that Trump was under investigation for more than six months.