FBI/JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/ROBERT MUELLER/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “When President Trump publicly demanded that the Justice Department open an investigation into the F.B.I.’s scrutiny of his campaign contacts with Russia, he inched further toward breaching an established constraint on executive power: The White House does not make decisions about individual law enforcement investigations…Almost since he took office, Mr. Trump has battered the Justice Department’s independence indirectly — lamenting its failure to reopen a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton that found no wrongdoing, and openly complaining that Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia inquiry. But he had also acknowledged that as president, ‘I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department,’ as he told a radio interviewer with frustration last fall. As part of that pattern, he has also denied the account by James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director he abruptly fired, that the president privately urged him to drop an investigation into Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser. But Mr. Trump has also been flirting with going further, as he hinted late last year when he claimed in a New York Times interview that ‘I have an absolute right to do what I want to with the Justice Department.’ And now, by unabashedly ordering the department to open a particular investigation, Mr. Trump has ratcheted up his willingness to impose direct political control over the work of law enforcement officials.”
-Charlie Savage, “By Demanding an Investigation, Trump Challenged a Constraint on His Power,” The New York Times online, May 22, 2018