Former federal prosecutor Michael Zeldin Thursday took issue with President Donald Trump's tweet that he could have fired special counsel Robert Mueller at any time, commenting that he doesn't think the president could do that legally by himself.
“The statute that was used to appoint Mueller designates that as an attorney general power — and the attorney general is the only one I believe, constitutionally, that has the right to fire Mueller," Zeldin, now a CNN legal analyst, told "New Day" co-host Chris Cuomo.
"The power of firing follows the power of appointing," he added. "Because the power of appointment stays, by statute and regulation, only the attorney general can do it, and it can only be done with good cause or dereliction of duties."
Early Thursday, Trump aimed a critical tweet at The New York Times, two days after it reported that he had considered firing Mueller last December to shut down his investigation into Russian actactivitiesring the 2016 election.
"If I wanted to fire Robert Mueller in December, as reported by the Failing New York Times, I would have fired him," Trump said in a tweet.
The Times cited interviews with eight unnamed White House officials who said Trump was angry that there could be a new round of subpoenas targeting his business with Deutsche Bank. Mueller's office denied that there were subpoenas, and Trump backed down, the newspaper said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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