Thursday during an interview with CNN’s Manu Raju, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said if President Donald Trump attempted to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions, there would be “holy hell” to pay.
He added if the president tried to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, it “could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency unless Mueller did something wrong.”
Graham said, “I’m 100 percent behind Jeff Sessions. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee sent a very chilling tweet yesterday. There will be no confirmation hearing for a new attorney general in 2017. If Jeff Sessions is fired, there will be holy hell to pay. Any effort to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency unless Mueller did something wrong.”
He continued, “Right now, I have no reason to believe that Mueller is compromised. If you have reason to believe he is compromised and shouldn’t be serving as the special counsel, let me know. I’m working on legislation that I will introduce next week with Republicans and some Democrats, I think I can get all Democrats and a good part of Republicans to say the following—a special counsel cannot be fired when they were empanelled to investigate the president and his team, unless you have a judicial review of the firing. Not just for Trump, but any future president. We need a check and balance here. I’m going to try to come up with statutory language that says in the case of Bob Mueller and future special people; then judges will have to look and see whether or not the reasons stated, meet the statutory definitions.”
He added, “I think most of us agree with that. It’s really about Mueller. The idea that the president would fire Mueller, or have somebody fire Mueller because he doesn’t like Mueller or Mueller is doing something he doesn’t like, then we have become Russia. So, the red line should never be drawn. The president is not in the business of drawing red lines when it comes to the law. The law is above any presidential red line. What will happen, I think, is that the president will calm down, I hope. I look forward to working with him on the way forward in Afghanistan, on finding a way to cut taxes, infrastructure, maybe do something on health care. This is not just a diversion. This is unnerving. It is unfair to Jeff Sessions; he’s a good man who deserves better. And some of the suggestions the president is making go way beyond what is acceptable in a rule of law nation. So, I hope the president will get good counsel and advice and focus on what he got elected to do, which is change the culture in Washington. This is not draining the swamp. What he’s interjecting is turning democracy upside down, not taking stale political bodies and replacing them with new ideas, but taking 200-year concepts that we’re a nation of laws, not men, and trying to turn it upside down.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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