When U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon tanked the classified documents case against Donald Trump, she argued that she was not alone in her reasoning that it’s “dangerous” to have rogue prosecutors involved in politically sensitive investigations.
Another critic of independent prosecutors, Cannon wrote, was a Democrat: Bill Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno.
Except, a closer inspection of Reno’s Senate testimony in 1999 offers a very different reading of the current situation. Reno didn’t argue that the appointment of a special prosecutor is lawless, but rather, that Congress did away with a law specifically carving out an “independent counsel” to make sure future prosecutors like Smith were better controlled.