Senate Democrats mulling lawsuit over Trump’s AG appointment

Democratic Party lawmakers in the US Senate are considering legal action over President Donald Trump’s appointment of a new acting attorney general to head the Justice Department, as some outside experts called the move unconstitutional.

US congressional sources said on Friday that Democrats in the upper chamber of Congress were considering suing Trump on the grounds that the president ignored a clause in the US Constitution that states some senior government officials must be confirmed by the Senate.

“The only two paths to that office are regular succession, and advice (and) consent,” said a source close to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Trump on Wednesday named Matthew Whitaker to replace former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was forced to resign after months of attacks by Trump for rescuing himself from an ongoing investigation into alleged Russian collusion with Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign.

The move made Whitaker supervisor of the investigation, which has hung over Trump’s presidency. Whitaker is a critic of the probe, which is led by US Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Democrats worry that Sessions’ ouster and Whitaker’s appointment might be precursors to Trump moving to end the investigation.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a career Justice Department official already confirmed by the Senate, should have been named the new attorney general.

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said Friday he was “considering action that might be brought against an interim appointment that violates the normal statutory line of succession and raises very serious constitutional questions.”

PressTV-Trump again calls Russia probe a ‘phony hoax’

The US president has once again called the federal investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and his 2016 election campaign a "phony hoax."

The Appointments Clause of the US Constitution states that some senior government officials, known as “principal officers,” must be confirmed by the Senate.

John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told Reuters that “the Supreme Court made clear that the Attorney General is a principal officer” in a 1998 case…therefore, Whitaker cannot serve as acting Attorney General.”

As the minority party in the Senate, Democrats might need some Republican support to have legal standing to sue Trump under the Appointments Clause, said Andrew Wright, who was a White House lawyer under former President Barack Obama.

Tens of thousands of Americans staged nationwide rallies on Thursday in support of the federal probe against Trump. The rallies, dubbed “Nobody is Above the Law,” were led by the activist group MoveOn.

On Friday, Trump once again called the federal investigation a "phony hoax," saying he won the election because he was a stronger candidate than Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton.

“I didn’t speak to the Russians; the fact is I was a much better candidate than Hillary Clinton, I worked much harder, I went to the right places, she went to the wrong places, because she didn't know what the hell she was doing," Trump told reporters at the White House.

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