Any legislation designed to ban President Donald Trump from firing FBI special counsel Robert Mueller is unconstitutional, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, declared in an opinion piece posted Tuesday by USA Today.
"Political expedience can never trump the Constitution," the conservative wrote in a commentary ahead of the Senate Judiciary Committee consideration of a bill that would restrict firing for "good cause" only — and allow a special counsel to challenge the firing in court.
"Because the power to prosecute is the quintessential executive authority, any congressional attempt to direct prosecutions — including by limiting the president's power to fire a prosecutor — is an unconstitutional breach in the separation of powers," he writes.
Elections are among the ways to hold executive branch officials accountable, Lee argues — and "we should stick with those remedies, because undermining the separation of powers is a grave threat to liberty."
Lee says by taking away Trump's legal authority to oust Mueller, lawmakers would risk creating an "unaccountable" federal prosecutor, even if that prosecutor acts "unjustly or unwisely."
He referenced a quote from former Attorney General Robert Jackson claiming "the prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America."
"That's even more true if the prosecutor has been made unaccountable to the public, yet that's exactly what this legislation aims to do," Lee wrote.