President Trump’s selection of Matthew Whitaker to serve as acting attorney general has provoked alarm across the political spectrum, and for good reason. But as troubling as Mr. Whitaker may turn out to be for the rule of law, Mr. Trump was acting within the scope of his constitutional authority. The move was legal, so long as it is temporary, which the law defines as up to 210 days.
That’s not to say that Mr. Whitaker, who until Wednesday had been chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, should take over the Justice Department even temporarily. He appears not only to be stunningly unqualified to serve as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer but also to have radical — and deeply troubling — views about the role of the federal courts in our constitutional system. And perhaps most important, as acting attorney general, Mr. Whitaker also takes over supervision of Robert Mueller, the special counsel, even though he has been an unabashed and highly partisan critic of Mr. Mueller’s investigation and almost certainly has an insurmountable professional conflict of interest that ought to force him to recuse from such a role.
Perhaps animated by those concerns, a broad and growing array of commentators, lawyers and scholars have argued that Mr. Whitaker’s appointment violates the Constitution, including, in an Op-Ed this week in The Times, the bipartisan pair of lawyers Neal Katyal and George Conway.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member