Jeff Sessions' appointment of special prosecutor bites Trump

A lot of snakes and scorpions live with the alligators in the swamp, and there are even more dangerous monsters there. No swamp creature is deadlier than a Washington lawyer.

The president is beginning to understand why he should never have agreed to his attorney general appointing a special prosecutor. We’re supposed to call him a “special counsel,” which may sound more upright, more punctilious and less fearsome, but words don’t fool anyone who lives in the swamp. A special counsel is hired to destroy the prey, like the gunfighter hired in Cheyenne to chase the sodbusters out of the valley.

The difference between a Cheyenne gunfighter and a special prosecutor is that the Cheyenne gunfighter is assigned to provoke a specific sodbuster to draw on him. A special prosecutor can choose an alternate target, just so he hits somebody. Kenneth Starr was hired to investigate Bill Clinton’s investments in White River waterfront property and wound up in Bubba’s underwear, and everything went downhill from there.

Robert Mueller was hired to investigate Donald Trump’s Russian connections, to get an indictment for something. “The Russian scandal” is recognized now to be a dry hole. So Mr. Mueller and his crack team of previously unemployed swamp lawyers are moving on to play the voyeur among the president’s business ventures. Maybe there’s something there. If not in the president’s ventures, maybe something nefarious in the business of his children or other associates.

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