Could Narrow Scope of New Special Counsel Miss Wider Corruption in Trump White House?

It has been another extraordinary 24 hours in the nation’s capital. In the biggest news of the day, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to serve as a special counsel to oversee a probe into Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. The move came one day after reports emerged that President Trump had personally asked former FBI Director James Comey to end the agency’s investigation into Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who was fired for lying both publicly and privately about his contacts with Russian officials. In another new development, The New York Times reports Trump picked Michael Flynn as his national security adviser even though Flynn had warned Trump’s transition team that he was under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign. We speak to Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist who covers national security and civil liberties. She runs the website EmptyWheel.net.