Schumer's Special Prosecutor Proposal for Russia Lacks 'Fairness'

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put his foot down on CNN’S “State of the Union” this weekend.

[Schumer] said Sunday that the Senate should refuse to confirm a new FBI director until the Department of Justice appoints a special counsel to lead a probe into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

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“I think there are a lot of Democrats who feel that way,” Schumer said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’ll have to discuss it as a caucus, but I would support that move.”
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, proposed the idea after President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey last week.
Never mind that Andrew C. McCarthy — who, as prosecutor of the blind sheikh, ought to know — has explained that there is no such thing as special counsel or prosecutor in this instance independent of the executive branch. And never mind that Senator Warner himself made at least $6.75 million investing in a Russian search engine.  That isn’t enough to make him an oligarch, although he is the fourth richest man in Congress, so he’s close.
I say Schumer and Warner are on to something.  Forget the legal quibbling from lawyers.  They’re both lawyers too.  We have to get to the bottom of this Russia business once and for all.  Otherwise Putin will have won.  Even though he may not have turned our election upside down, he has certainly turned our minds upside down.  We — especially our media — can’t think of anything else.
Therefore I support Senators Schumer and Warner in their quest to make the DOJ appoint a special counsel on this matter before a new FBI director is confirmed by the Senate… except for one thing. As Barack Obama would put it — FAIRNESS.
 If you’re going to have a special counsel for the Trump-Russia situation — in the spirit of bipartisanship and indeed fairness — you would need to have similar counsels for the following:
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1. The hidden Hillary Clinton email server, attendant deliberate erasures of massive amounts of government data, including top secret, and the nonsensical (likely corrupted) FBI investigation that ensued.
3. The Clinton Foundation and its financial relations with Russia, notably the Uranium One deal.  Also profiteering off Haiti.
3. The misuse of our intelligence agencies for the surveillance and unmasking of Trump and associates and other private citizens by members of the Obama administration
4. The Internal Revenue Service’s singling out and harassing of many conservative-leaning non-profit organizations and attendant coverup of same.
5. The Benghazi incident and the deliberate lying about the deaths of our own soldiers to the American public and to the soldiers’ very own parents.
6. The Bergdahl affair and the absurd claim he was an American hero when he was a deserter.

Of course there are more, but I had to start somewhere.  Well, we might have to scratch number 6, annoying as it is, because we’re getting way too far overloaded on one side.  That’s particularly true since in the areas I just mentioned it’s clear what the potential crimes are.  In the matter of Trump and Russia, nobody knows.  And it’s been months, going on years, that we’ve been hearing about it. With all the leaks going on in Washington, you’d think they’d have come up with something other than Trump’s allegedly bad manners….

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But I quibble, speaking of quibbles, and I’m not even a lawyer.  I say, Chuck, let’s do it. Let’s have those special prosecutors or whatever you want to call them.  As Mao would have it, let a hundred special prosecutors bloom.  You might even have several of them double up to save taxpayer money.
But I would pay specific attention to number 3.  It  is by far the most significant to our future.  If we don’t get that sorted out, we won’t have one.
UPDATE: As many commenters have noted, I totally forgot the worst of all – the Iran Deal.  No excuses.  Thirty lashes, at least, for me.

Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media.  His latest book is I Know Best:  How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If  It Hasn’t Already.  You can find him procrastinating on Twitter @rogerlsimon.

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