Firing the special prosecutor: The Special Counsel may be disciplined or removed from office...

(Taken from) Special prosecutor: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_prosecutor#Since_1999

 
Since the expiration of the independent counsel statute in 1999, there is no federal law governing the appointment of a special prosecutor, as was the case until 1978.

With the law's expiration in 1999, the Justice Department, under Attorney General Janet Reno, promulgated procedural regulations governing the appointment of special counsels.

In 1999, these regulations were used year by Reno to appoint John Danforth special counsel to investigate the FBI's handling of the Waco siege.^[16]

In 2003, during the George W. Bush administration, Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed special counsel to investigate the Plame affair by Deputy Attorney General James Comey after the recusal of Attorney General John Ashcroft.

On May 17, 2017, former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

 Unlike other appointments, the appointment of Mueller did not specify a criminal investigation for which he was being appointed special counsel.

 (My Questions)
(Was Mueller's appointment in accordance with Department of Justice and/or Attorney General Janet Reno's promulgated procedural regulations governing the appointment of special counsels?)
(too broad of an investigation?) 
(little or no supervision)
(not in accordance with procedural regulations?) 
(is anything else cock-eyed with Muellers appoint?)
(do they make up new procedures as they go along)

The current special counsel regulations specify that:

The Special Counsel may be disciplined or removed from office only by the personal action of the Attorney General. The Attorney General may remove a Special Counsel for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause, including violation of Departmental policies. The Attorney General shall inform the Special Counsel in writing of the specific reason for their removal.

Unlike the independent counsel law, however, the current special counsel regulations were promulgated by the Justice Department and have no underlying statutory basis. Thus their force to constrain the attorney general is uncertain. 

Constitutionality

The appointment of a special prosecutor raises inherent separation of powers questions under the U.S. Constitution. Since the special prosecutor is a member of the executive branch, it has been argued that the special prosecutor is ultimately answerable to the president, and can therefore be fired by them. Richard Nixon, for example, argued that he could not be compelled by a subpoena issued by his own subordinate.

The constitutionality of the independent counsel law was affirmed by a 7–1 decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Morrison v. Olson

The independent counsel law originally enacted in the Ethics in Government Act did not allow independent counsels appointed under the law to be removed except under specific circumstances such as wrongdoing or incapacitation. This law is no longer in effect.

Justice Scalia's dissent

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Justice Scalia, the lone dissenter, said that the law should be struck down because

1. criminal prosecution is an exercise of "purely executive power" and
2. the law deprived the president of "exclusive control" of that power.

In his opinion, Scalia also predicted how the law might be abused in practice, writing, "I fear the Court has permanently encumbered the Republic with an institution that will do it great harm."
Conservatives^[who?] began to share his concern when in 1992, four days before the US presidential election, Lawrence Walsh announced the re-indictment of former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger on charges related to the Iran-Contra affair. Critics^[who?] also sensed partisan politics when Walsh's office leaked a note suggesting President Bush had lied about his connections to the affair.
Liberals^[who?] also began to share Scalia's concern when independent counsel Kenneth Starr spent $40 million and more than four years investigating President Clinton's land deals and extramarital affairs. Many^[who?] believed the investigation was plagued by partisanship.

Scalia's Finest Opinion: A look back at his influential dissent on the ­independent counsel law. http://michaelangelo-raphaelo.blogspot.com/2017/11/scalias-finest-opinion-look-back-at-his.html?spref=tw