11:59 a.m.: Judge confirms lawfulness of special counsel’s appointment
With Manafort’s trial pressing forward, a federal judge in D.C. on Thursday affirmed the legal legitimacy of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s appointment.
In a 93-page opinion, Judge Beryl A. Howell wrote that Mueller’s power “falls well within the boundaries the Constitution permits,” because he was supervised by an official who was himself accountable to the president. She wrote that “multiple statutes” authorized Mueller’s appointment, and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who named him to the post, “had power to do so.”
The opinion came in response to a legal challenge from a witness who was arguing he could not be compelled to testify before a grand jury. The witness argued that Mueller wielded too much power and was appointed unlawfully. In the witness’s view, Mueller should have been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and there was no statute giving Rosenstein the authority to appoint him.
The witness was not named, though his attorney told The Post’s Manuel Roig-Franzia it was Andrew Miller, an associate of political operative and Trump adviser Roger Stone.
The ruling from Howell won’t have any direct bearing on Manafort’s case. Manafort himself had sought to challenge Mueller’s authority in the case against him in D.C. — though he abandoned part of that, and a judge rejected his request to stop Mueller from bringing charges against him in the future. Judge T.S. Ellis III also earlier rejected an effort by Manafort to get the charges against him in Virginia thrown out.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/08/02/paul-manafort-trial-day-3-live-updates/?utm_term=.d7287f7677df