Noah Feldman, Columnist

What If Trump Says 'You're Fired' and Mueller Says No?

The president could be bungling his way into a legal battle over the limits of executive power.

April 11, 2018 at 2:32 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

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What if Donald Trump tries to fire Robert Mueller -- and fails? The scenario isn’t far-fetched. Under Department of Justice regulations, the special counsel, Mueller, can only be fired “by the personal action of the Attorney General” for “misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause.”

President Trump, who doesn’t much care for legal technicalities, has ramped up his attacks on the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and on Mueller himself. We know from the New York Times that he has at least twice tried to shut down the probe. Trump might yet try to fire Mueller directly; his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that the president “certainly believes he has the power” to do so. Or Trump could try fire Mueller without rescinding the special counsel regulations. Or Trump and his Department of Justice might fail to follow proper procedure in withdrawing the regulations.