Professor Jed Shugerman was interviewed for a WWL First News podcast to discuss the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the Trump-Russia investigation.
Special counsel is usually given a specific jurisdiction under the statutes and the codes set up by the Department of Justice. So he’ll be tasked with looking at certain things but it’s not such a stretch to remember back—and it was a different position in the Clinton White House to get from the Whitewater investigation to Monica Lewinsky. It’s the kind of thing that you can start with a certain jurisdiction—and independent counsel is different from the special counsel. But once you’re given criminal jurisdiction or civil jurisdiction over a particular set of questions it can grow pretty quickly.