Allison Shelley
Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker—who was brought in as a temporary replacement for the ousted Jeff Sessions—is unlikely to recuse himself from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, according to associates cited Thursday by The Washington Post. Whitaker’s associates also told the Post that he is unlikely to approve a request from Mueller to subpoena President Trump, whose legal team has repeatedly delayed Mueller’s efforts to question him. Democrats including Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer have already called on Whitaker to follow in Sessions’ footsteps and recuse himself, given his prior criticism of the investigation. In 2017, Whitaker wrote in a CNN op-ed that “Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing.” If Mueller doesn’t back off, he added, his efforts would “eventually start to look like a political fishing expedition.”