Justice Department officials are discussing whether there is a need to appoint a special counsel to oversee two investigations into former President Donald Trump if he decides to run for president again in 2024, according to a new report.
Conversations about appointing a special counsel have touched on whether doing so would shield the Justice Department from claims that President Joe Biden’s administration is seeking to undermine his top political rival, sources told CNN. A final decision has yet to be made.
Trump has heavily teased that he is interested in a third campaign but has not formally declared. He is under investigation for his handling of documents after leaving office, including those seized from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in a raid earlier this year. He is also under scrutiny in an investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Trump has broadly denied any wrongdoing, claiming he is the target of vindictive politics. Another “witch hunt” he has assailed over the years was the special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller, who examined ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, which was followed by a special counsel investigation still being run by former U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is examining the genesis of the FBI’s Russia investigation.
As it stands, under the Biden administration, a final decision on indicting Trump lies with Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has not publicly given any indication on whether he would prosecute the former president, though he has indicated his actions would not be swayed by politics.
“Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly without fear or favor,” Garland said in August after approving the FBI raid.
The Justice department has added new prosecutors to the mix for the investigations, including national security expert David Raskin, and prosecutor-turned-defense lawyer David Rody, who specialized in conspiracy and gang cases, according to the CNN report. A fraud and public corruption prosecutor was also brought into the Jan. 6 investigations.
GOP aides on Capitol Hill and former strategists have privately predicted that Trump would be indicted in the next 60-90 days, but have stressed that they did not have any insider knowledge to support the predictions. An indictment sooner rather than later would help limit any claim of partisanship, the insiders said.