by ConservativeHQ.com Staff

Just when you think the corruption in Washington, DC couldn’t get any deeper or slimier, more news comes out about the connections between Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Democratic Deep State’s legal operatives.

It turns out that Judge Beryl Howell, the jurist who signed off on Robert Mueller’s request to convene a Washington, D.C. grand jury for the Russia investigation is a former staffer for Vermont’s hyper-partisan Leftist Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and the Senate Committee on the Judiciary that is now investigating some of the same allegations that are now before the Grand Jury.

According to the Daily Beast, Howell “will be the umpire-in-chief: deciding whether or not Trump allies’ lawyers can quash subpoenas, and whether or not people like Jared Kushner can invoke what’s known as executive privilege to get out of testifying under oath before Mueller’s grand jury.”

Our friend Paul Mirengoff of PowerLine identified another potential problem with Howell; her close association with a member of Mueller’s team — Andrew Weissmann.

Mirengoff reports the two worked together as assistant U.S. attorneys in the Eastern District of New York. That by itself wouldn’t be problematic. However, according to the Daily Beast, the two co-authored an article in 2006 about (of all things) obstruction of justice.

The next year, Weissman thanked Howell, then a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, for her help with another article she wrote. Clearly, the two have a relationship that continued well beyond their days as young prosecutors, concluded Mirengoff.

Given Howell’s work for the hyper-partisan Leahy and her relationship with Weissman, there are substantial reasons to doubt her impartiality in the Russia investigation matter.

Our friend Rick Manning, President of Americans for Limited Government yesterday issued the following statement urging Chief Judge of the District Court of the District of Columbia Beryl Howell to recuse herself from considering the investigation being brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller:

You can hear the railroad whistles in the distance as special counsel Robert Mueller, a friend of fired FBI Director James Comey, who deliberately set the stage for Mueller’s appointment out of spite for his dismissal, will have a federal judge who used to work as a Democrat staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee overseeing the case. The judge, Beryl Howell, not only used to work with one of the Democrat prosecutors now hired to staff the investigation by Mueller, she co-authored a paper together with him where they argued for a very broad view of what constitutes obstruction of justice. To make matters worse for anyone hoping that the Mueller witch hunt will somehow focus on obvious direct malfeasance by the Obama Justice Department and its former FBI Director, Judge Howell worked with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and even spoke at a 2016 dinner honoring her.

The President of the United States deserves better than a kangaroo court, and if Judge Howell and Mueller for that matter do not recuse themselves from being involved in these proceedings, then current Attorney General Sessions should rescind his recusal which was done for far less rationale, and end the Mueller farce once and for all. The fact that Judge Howell did not immediately disassociate herself from the case, indicates an extraordinary lack of judgement. Unless she reconsiders, Attorney General Sessions has no option but to step in and end this political witch hunt.

When President Obama nominated Howell in 2010, Senator Leahy said: “We rarely have before us nominees to the bench with the breadth of experience that she brings.”

Experience indeed. Friends of ours on Capitol Hill remind us that immediately after 9/11 when Leahy was working on the bill to establish the Department of Homeland Security Beryl Howell was his staffer handling the bill. According to one “she showed up at meetings wearing a Mao green military hat and sometimes in full Mao military fatigues” and was “a total socialist left winger.”

With praise like that from Leahy, and a record like hers, it’s very likely that Judge Beryl Howell is a hyper-partisan leftist, too. And one who will become a hero for the Left if she sticks it to a president that, trust us, even less partisan Washingtonians than ex-Leahy staffers can’t stand.

We are with our friends Rick Manning and Paul Mirengoff – Judge Howell should recuse herself and President Trump’s legal team should be prepared for a rough procedural ride if she does not.