Maxwell School News and Commentary

"I think the fact that [George] Papadopoulos had a meeting early on or had connections early on with Russian government officials while he was employed by the Trump campaign is pretty damaging," says William C. Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism.

“This is a tremendously costly endeavor, and that’s why we haven’t done it already,” says Pete Wilcoxen, director of the Center for Environmental Policy and Administration, about revising the EPA's model for evaluating the broad economic costs and benefits of air pollution regulations.

"The Mueller investigation from the beginning has been about potential collusion, and this would be additional evidence of potential collusion involving the campaign, in particular of General Flynn," says Professor Emeritus William C. Banks.

"I think it's a very disturbing trend for the President to turn the relationship between the presidency and the justice department into an adversarial relationship based on political points of view. The justice department is charged with enforcing the law, it's that simple, and they shouldn't be influenced to do so in a certain way by the president or anyone else," says William C. Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism.

"The Justice Department could certainly apply pressure on Mueller's team to hasten the investigation, make it difficult to obtain the funds beyond certain periods to continue to investigate; more likely that those kinds of informal pressures would be applied rather than removal itself," said William Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs and director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism.

William C. Banks, professor of practice of public administration an international affairs, says it is up to individual states to reveal the extent to which their systems have been intruded upon. He adds that a federalized system with wide stratification of election officials bound to the county level makes the system resilient and harder to damage.

"We got confirmation that the White House counsel was told in no certain terms by Yates that indeed there was a serious problem with the veracity of Michael Flynn's statements, and those statements were being repeated by other White House officials, including the Vice President," said William Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs and director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism.

"A failure to register, or making a false statement, or an omission of a material fact in connection with registration is also unlawful, if it was willfully done. If it was willfully done, he could face either civil or criminal penalties," assesses William C. Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs.