John W. Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, can convene a grand jury, issue subpoenas, collect evidence and order witnesses to testify — all the usual powers a federal prosecutor has — as he delves into whether the FBI abused its powers when it sought permission and then carried out wiretapping of a Trump campaign figure, or whether it trod too lightly in pursuing questions about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Sessions said the facts of the FBI situation don’t yet rise to the level of demanding a special counsel, but Mr. Huber is as close as can be.
“He will have the full authority of a federal prosecutor,” said Richard Painter, former chief ethics attorney for President George W. Bush. “If he looks at this and finds someone in the DOJ lied to a government official, he would be able to convene a grand jury, compel testimony and even prosecute them.”
It could also be taken to mean, that we should take into consideration how these things will be looked at in "history books."
If all this is to come to pass as we hope it will, history will judge every move made by Sessions, DOJ, and The Donald. I believe that is the reason such extreme care is being taken to set the stage for events, legally, ethically, and politically.
Think big, bigger, biggest.
Justice Department veterans say the current situation has strong parallels to a scenario that played out over a decade ago after allegations surfaced that the Bush White House deliberately leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative married to a prominent Iraq War critic, Joe Wilson.
In that case, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from investigating—handing the decision about whether to invite a special prosecutor to his deputy attorney general, James Comey, who is now director of the FBI.
“There was nothing that anything to do with what Ashcroft said or did in the campaign...He just decided to do this because of the mere fact that he was a political appointee of the president,” said former House Counsel Stan Brand. “That’s the standard now. I think the attorney general of any stripe in any administration is in an untenable position of trying to conduct an investigation or even having people report to him when that investigation involves the president or his aides.”
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https://www.npr.org/2013/05/29/187079882/the-role-of-the-attorney-general-throughout-history
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I took it as the history of special prosecutors and the modern DoJ.
NPR transcript is wide-ranging.
Apologies for non-live links. I think it's an HTML situation.