The news that special counsel Robert Mueller has tapped more help from the Justice Department to help with the year-old probe into Russian interference during the 2016 election just shows that he was never needed in the first place, Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz argued Friday.
"There are enough resources within the Justice Department, within the various U.S. Attorneys offices," Dershowitz told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "He is using all of these resources. Why is he necessary? Why do we need somebody to come in and have targets on the back of people, violate civil liberties, try to squeeze people to sing or even to compose?"
Mueller is using more career prosecutors from the offices of U.S. attorneys and from Justice Department headquarters, along with FBI agents in a sign that he'll eventually hand off parts of the spiraling investigation, according to former and current U.S. Officials.
"The special counsel is a very dangerous phenomenon to democracy," said Dershowitz. "We have in place inspector generals and congressional oversight committees and U.S. Attorneys' offices all over the country. That is enough. Why do we have to staff the prosecutor's office?"
Dershowitz said he suspects Mueller is trying to bring the investigation to an end, and that he'll indict "some low-hanging fruit" in an effort to get them to talk about people higher up than they are. Then, he said, Mueller will most likely write a "very one-sided" report showing only his side of the events.
"He will not hear defense lawyers with opposing arguments," said Dershowitz, adding that debate should be encouraged about the "impact of special counsel on the civil liberties of all Americans."
If Mueller hands off the probe to a larger team of prosecutors, that would "vindicate me completely," Dershowitz added. "That's what I said from the beginning. Mueller should not be in this probe. It should be left to existing professional civil servant prosecutors, people who have served Republicans and Democrats alike, people who have been in the U.S. Attorney's office some of them 20, 30, 40 years.Let them do the investigation. We don't need a special counsel."
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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