ways by both Mueller and White House insiders: it puts the President's

ways by both Mueller and White House insiders: it puts the President's public behavior on trial. The nature of that behavior, for the Mueller team, is corrupt; this, according to the White House, is how voters elected the President to behave. The Special Counsel seems less worried about its legal position than it does about it’s existential one—continuing to anticipate how the President might use his authority to move against it. It sees its most immediate threat as a move by the President to replace Rosenstein. Here it believes that in the inevitable Supreme Court battle that would follow a direct attempt by the President to fire the Special Counsel, the Court would likely rebuff such an expansion of Presidential authority. At the same time, according to its internal research, the Mueller team understands that the President, acting with only somewhat more subtlety, would have the authority to order the Attorney General—even given his prior recusal—to repeal the Special Counsel regulations and close down the investigation. He can fire the Attorney General if he refuses. The President, could, too, according to the Special Counsel's analysis, fire Rosenstein and seek someone else to oversee the investigation in ways more to his liking. Both of these actions could, the Special Counsel believes, become part of the behavior that it argues in the indictment amounts to a prima facie case for obstruction of justice. The Mueller team continues to believe it is protected by political realities—the President can not know how Congress might respond, and it might well respond with impeachment—and by bureaucratic ones. Changes to the Special Counsel authorization might require an extended comment period, meanwhile leaving the Special Counsel's status unchanged. Still, what if the President, acting unilaterally, does shut it down? This, people around the President say is the unknown legal area that might be advantageous to the President. The delays and disruption that result as courts sort out the ramifications of the President's actions might well be the President's legal friend—the reason some in the White House have been urging the President to end the investigation, whatever the political fallout. If so, what then happens to all the work the Special Counsel's office has done, and, indeed, to the sitting Grand Juries reviewing the evidence? The special counsel's view, according to insiders working on the issues, is that nobody knows. The optimistic legal view is that the HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030262