OPINION:
Federal justice officials appear to have woven a tapestry of travesty. It now must be unraveled. As important as it is find the truth of what has transpired, it is even more important for the agencies to retain their credibility.
From investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server and premature exoneration, to using an opposition-funded Russian dossier to repeatedly obtain FISA surveillance warrants on a low level Trump staffer, to Robert Mueller’s unending and undefined investigation, questions are piling up and compounding. It is now imperative that there be an independent review at the highest level of these multiplying and interlocking episodes — each worthy of its own investigation.
If proper time had been taken, perhaps it would have been clear that Mr. Mueller’s investigation was compromised at inception. Now, that conclusion is unmistakable. Too many circumstances, similarities and characters extend from episode to episode to not recognize we are seeing not separate scenes, but acts in the same play.
It is a famous adage that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. Justice must be even more so. It is clear that she is not in this instance.
Simply, the questions that prompted Mr. Mueller’s investigation — and the little they have produced — have been eclipsed by the questions arising from it. One overarching one now looms: How much more will it take before official investigation of the investigators is ordered?
Answering the “how” here is as simple as the authority by which Mr. Mueller conducts his own inquiry. Other means exist too; there is no shortage by which independent investigations can and have been conducted.
Past investigations also offer a valuable insight. Looking over their post-Watergate, four decade history, many sprang from fewer questions, and in less pressing areas, than those arising here.
It is the “why” for an independent investigation that makes it most compelling. Many previous independent investigations did not arise from questions striking at the fundamental basis of how our government functions. Current questions appear as though they do.
John Adams rightfully observed that the crux of the America’s uniqueness comes from being governed by laws and not by men. No country on earth, or in history, puts greater stock in rule of law. We became free by the Declaration of Independence; we became a country by the Constitution. A complex contract between government and governed, it has produced a legal system that defines America more than anything else.
For us, it literally defines justice. Justice is supposed to be blind; the Constitution endeavors to ensure she is. Increasingly it appears that she has not been in several interrelated instances.
There is a growing appearance that for at least a period, we were ruled not by laws, but by men. That there existed during the 2016 presidential campaign a coordination of top administration officials in our government’s most sensitive agencies to influence — if not determine — the election’s outcome, and that this has continued into the Mueller investigation.
To open-minded observers, there are now serious questions, growing daily, that a group in the federal government not only violated its contract with the American people, but did so willfully and perhaps premeditatedly. There can be no higher justification for an independent examination of the federal government’s legal apparatus. And it can now only be achieved by an independent counsel.
The agencies in question are the federal law enforcement and prosecutorial arms. It is essential to our government that these agencies, above all others, must be impartial. Without that, our government lacks it too.
These agencies, under any administration — but particularly one itself a target in the ongoing investigation — cannot be expected to investigate themselves in unbiased fashion.
Independent counsels are justified by the questions arising from the circumstances they are charged to examine. If they existed for Mr. Mueller’s investigation, they assuredly exist now.
Perhaps there are benign answers to the escalating questions — as benign as what Mr. Mueller’s own investigation has uncovered. However, officials have let the questions race too far ahead of the answers. The questions are now too exposed — and with them the officials involved. The time has come for the answers to be as well.
• J.T. Young served in the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget.
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