In appointing a special counsel to investigate former President Donald Trump, the Justice Department (DOJ) has turned its law enforcement apparatus into a “tool to attack a political enemy,” according to FBI veteran Marc Ruskin.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden administration appointee, on Nov. 18 made the announcement in Washington, handing former DOJ prosecutor Jack Smith the task to oversee investigations related to Trump’s handling of classified records and parts of the probe into the events surrounding Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and characterized Garland’s move as a “horrendous abuse of power” and the “latest in the long series of witch hunts.”
The timing of the appointment is significant, Ruskin said, noting how it dovetailed with pledges by House Republicans to investigate President Joe Biden and his administration once the GOP takes the gavel in January.
“Using the legal system in baseless investigations and prosecutions has been a hallmark of the anti-Trump campaign since before 2016,” Ruskin, who served 27 years with the FBI and is a contributor for The Epoch Times, said in an interview.
Ruskin believes that the special counsel investigation serves a particular purpose.
“It’s an old trick,” he said. “They’ll be hoping to divert attention from the congressional investigations and focus instead on a baseless special counsel investigation, because there’s no question that the legacy media is going to jump on board and give this front page attention, while the investigations being conducted by Congress will either be ignored or relegated to the back of the newspaper.”
U.S. Code 28 CFR § 600.1 prescribes that the DOJ should appoint a special counsel in an investigation where there is a conflict of interest or other extraordinary circumstances, under which it would be in the public interest for an outside special counsel to step in.
In the Friday press conference, Garland described the appointment of Smith, a registered independent, as a matter of public interest, citing Trump’s presidential candidacy and Biden’s interest in entering the race. Ruskin, however, didn’t feel convinced that there were sufficient grounds to warrant such a move.
“They really haven’t articulated facts which justified the appointment of any kind of counsel,” he said.
Some Trump critics have argued that the special counsel appointment suggests that the Justice Department is intent on bringing the case to indictment. Ruskin dismissed this claim as “a fabrication in order to justify a difficult-to-justify investigation.”
“The argument is the old ‘where the smoke there must be fire’ reasoning, which is fallacious reasoning,” he said. “It’s a fallacy which has been propagated in order to justify what is arguably a politically motivated investigation seeking to create an advantage for the Democratic Party in the upcoming elections.”
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