Turley is a law professor at George Washington University, who attained national fame during the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton as a top legal authority on special counsels and congressional investigations of government wrongdoing, including criminal wrongdoing. His reputation has only grown during the intervening 20 years, as he has weighed in on scandals and investigations of public officials from both political parties.
Sessions sent a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC), and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), informing them that Huber is conducting a full-fledged criminal investigation into all the matters Republicans are calling for a special counsel to investigate. Huber has been investigating these possible crimes for five months, since November 13, 2017.
During an interview on Lou Dobbs’s Fox Business Network show, Turley explained to guest host Stuart Varney that the media are wrongly reporting that Sessions will not appoint a second special counsel. “He did not foreclose the possibility of a special counsel,” he insisted.
Instead, Turley explained that Sessions has ordered Huber to “team up with the inspector general (IG) within the Justice Department to investigate these matters.”
Sessions informed Congress in his letter that all the matters recommended for investigation by Goodlatte, Gowdy, and Grassley are “fully within the scope of [Huber’s] existing mandate.” He also informed the chairmen that Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who is working with Huber, has a staff of 470 investigators, giving Huber access to enormous investigative firepower that far exceeds the staff of any special counsel.
That point is critical because as Sessions’ March 29 letter explains, the inspector general’s jurisdiction to conduct civil and criminal investigations includes “actions taken by former employees after they have left government service.” Then Huber can act on any of those matters.
As a U.S. attorney, Huber has full authority to empanel a grand jury and to file criminal charges. A grand jury can be empaneled anywhere, which means that it could be a group of citizens from deep-red Utah – in the heart of Trump country – instead of the D.C. Swamp that decides whether to hand down indictments for felony prosecution.
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