Former FBI Director Robert Mueller last week assumed control of the octopus-like investigation into Russia’s election interference and its myriad tentacles: cyberhacking, possible collusion with Trump campaign staffers and the targeted use of “fake news” are just a few.
Defining the exact scope of that sprawling investigation is paramount to Mueller’s work as special counsel, says Ed Dowd, one of the only people to ever work as a special counsel before.
“I think it’s really important to early on delineate these are the two, three, whatever it is things we’re looking at, and to make that really clear to the press, to the public and to your own staff,” Dowd, a top investigator on the probe into the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, told TPM in a phone interview.
“[Waco special counsel] Jack Danforth and I both think it is really important to define what you’re looking into so that people don’t expect you to come up with answers on subjects you’re not even looking at,” Dowd continued.
As deputy special counsel, Dowd helped oversee the Waco investigation for 14 months side-by-side with Danforth, a former Republican senator appointed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno to handle the case. Both attorneys went on to work at St. Louis law firm Bryan Cave, before moving together to a firm Dowd co-founded, Dowd Bennett.
The Waco investigators had the advantage of initiating their probe six years after the botched FBI raid of the religious cult’s compound left 76 people dead, birthing countless conspiracy theories. The investigators also elected to run the probe away from the public eye, out of a small St. Louis, Missouri office hundreds of miles from the nation’s capitol.
By contrast, Mueller, the second-ever person named special counsel, is taking over a probe that is just under a year into its work and already has reached the current administration.
Dowd thinks Mueller’s appointment will bring clarity and, more importantly, a sense of calm to an investigation that has dominated the news cycle for months. The key will be running a tight ship and containing leaks, he said.
“Tell everyone on your staff if there is any leak whatsoever, intentional or unintentional, accidental, from your spouse, anything, you’re off the investigation immediately,” Dowd insisted.
“It’s really one of the first rules of the Department of Justice: you don’t talk about what’s happening in an investigation,” he continued, saying doing so is “so destructive for the people who are under investigation.”
Managing leaks is sure to be more difficult with the Russia probe than it was with the Waco investigation. For example, CNN reported that Mueller has already been briefed on some of the memos fired FBI Director James Comey reportedly wrote to document his conversations with President Donald Trump, and that he has met with FBI investigators working the case.
Dowd expressed confidence in Mueller’s ability to do a “great, thorough job” and keep the investigation buttoned up, even if he brings on outside investigators and experts to assist with the probe, as the Waco investigators did.
Mueller’s job would be made easier if Congress, which has four committees currently looking into Russia across both chambers, lets him take the lead, Dowd said.
Committees in the House and Senate have already held public hearings with senior intelligence and Justice Department officials, combed through reams of classified material and subpoenaed more documents from Trump campaign associates.
Some lawmakers have openly expressed dismay that the special counsel appointment would reduce Congress’ role.
“You’ve got a special counsel who has prosecutorial powers now, and I think we in Congress have to be very careful not to interfere,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told TPM. “It’s going to really limit what Congress can do. It’s going to really limit what the public will know about this.”
Reports that Mueller is conferring with Comey before his highly-anticipated appearance before Congress also sparked concern that Comey’s testimony would be limited.
Dowd said that keeping the public, and even Congress, temporarily in the dark is a worthy tradeoff for a credible, non-partisan outcome of the federal investigation. At the outset of the Waco probe, special counsel Danforth told the Senate committee investigating the raid that his investigators “want to go first,” he said.
Then-Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, agreed to Danforth’s requests, Dowd recalled, giving them a “clear field.”
“They should have free reign and should not be interfered with,” the veteran prosecutor said of Mueller’s investigation. “No one else should be promising immunity or interviewing witnesses until they’re done. That’s the way to get to the bottom of it and really get answers.”
