CNN’s Elie Honig Explains Why Appointing an Epstein Special Counsel ‘Makes No Sense’
CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig ripped the idea that President Donald Trump should appoint a special counsel to oversee the Jeffrey Epstein case and the release of files related to it.
Attorney General Pam Bondi rankled Trump supporters with what they felt was a woefully insufficient finding that Epstein did not have a client list, even though in February she said it existed. The Department of Justice also reiterated its conclusion that the dead sex trafficker killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019.
Some have suggested that the president appoint a special counsel to handle the case. On Wednesday, a reporter at the White House tried to get a response from Trump on the matter.
“Would you consider appointing a special counsel to investigate the Jeffrey Epstein investigation?” the reporter asked.
“I have nothing to do with it,” Trump said before making a quick exit.
Hours later on CNN’s AC360, Anderson Cooper asked Honig, a former federal prosecutor, about the idea.
“There was rumblings of, you know, is the president going to call for a special counsel?” the host said. “Some in Congress have, or some people have suggested there should be. Does that even make any sense? Special counsels don’t really do that.”
Honig responded:
It makes no sense. It would be purely a fig leaf. It would cure nothing. It would solve nothing. All it would do if there was a special counsel appointment, would be to enable the administration to say, “Look, we did something. We did something really dramatic.”
But this has no relationship to the actual reason special counsel have been used by both Republicans and Democrats over the last 50-plus years. The reason you bring in a special counsel is if you have a live criminal investigation that poses a conflict of interest for the bosses at DOJ. What would a special counsel even do here? You’re not gonna prosecute Jeffrey Epstein. He’s dead. Ghislaine Maxwell’s in prison for 20 years. All the other potential criminality is almost certainly too old outside the statute of limitations. So, it’s a cover.
Watch above via CNN.
