Lawyers are supposed to operate under ethical guidelines.  These ethics rules exist to to protect the public, and to ensure the integrity of the justice system.  In other words, the guiding principle underpinning the rules of ethics is to ensure that those who come into contact with the justice system can get a fair shake, and just as vital, that the system itself is is recognized and regarded as being fair.  For these reasons, the ethics rules prohibit lawyers from engaging in conduct which is improper, or which may be perceived as improper.  That’s the most important concern, the appearance of impropriety.  That is, the risk that some action or condition, although it may be perfectly legitimate, may be cause many to question its propriety.  I’ll give examples.  I was a prosecutor for 25 years.  In that time, I prosecuted hundreds of defendants, some for major crimes, and some for minor offenses.  I now do criminal defense work.  If a criminal defendant comes to me, and it turns out that I was the prosecutor on his case in say, 1987, I can’t represent that defendant.  It’s not because I bear him any ill will.  I probably didn’t even remember his name, and, without doing research, I surely couldn’t tell you what his previous case was about, or how it ended.  No matter.  Absent the consent of the defendant, I can’t represent him due to the appearance of impropriety.  Same thing goes for a judge who represented, or prosecuted, a person as a client in practice, and then went on the bench.  That judge can’t hear the case of the former client (or defendant).  Now, the judge may have no ax to grind, may not remember the person, and indeed, the former contact might even be in some respects a positive thing.  It doesn’t matter.  The appearance of impropriety rules.  These ethical rules are enforced throughout the justice system, at all levels, and in all cases, except for one case – that of the eternal investigation of Donald Trump.  While other defendants are accorded a presumption of innocence, the President is presumed to be guilty.  While presidents other than Donald Trump enjoy the privilege of the executive to exercise his constitutional powers without interference from the legislature or judiciary, Donald Trump does not.  His every action is deemed illegal.  While every other litigant or suspect is protected from the prejudice of actual bias or conflict, and the taint of perceived bias or conflict, President Trump is condemned to play the role of a permanent punching bag for the Left, and its co-conspirators, the decrepit never-Trumpers and the greedy establishment swamp-things.  Case in point, the investigation being conducted by Robert Mueller.  In a fair world, lawyers working for a special counsel would be expected to comply with the rules of ethics regarding impropriety.  We don’t live in a fair world.  But let’s back up.  Before you even get to an independent counsel, the rules of the Justice Department require probable cause to believe that some crime has been committed.  In Trump’s case, there was, and is, no crime to investigate.  Instead, the Stalinist method was used, “You show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”  Here’s what happened.  The CIA conducted an investigation of Trump staffers abroad, and then illegally extended its investigation to the U.S., passing it on to the FBI, specifically one Peter Strozk.  Of course, Strozk is the guy we now now to be an anti-Trump partisan.  Impropriety?  A task force including CIA, FBI, DIA, Justice, State, and Treasury investigated Trump, leading to four surveillance warrants authorizing wiretapping.  Not a criminal investigation, mind you, but foreign intelligence.  They found nothing.  Then Trump fired Comey, based principally on a Memo from Rod Rosenstein.  Comey, you will recall, exonerated Hillary Clinton for her mishandling of classified documents, then himself illegally took classified documents from the FBI.  Impropriety?  Rosenstein is friendly with Mueller, used to work for him.  Rosenstein takes Mueller to Trump as a replacement for Comey.  Impropriety?  Given what we now know about the FBI and Justice attempts to deny Congress documents, we can understand why Rosenstein wanted Mueller.  Trump refused to appoint Mueller, and the next day, Rosenstein appointed Mueller as independent counsel, to investigate Trump.  Impropriety?  Mueller than hired 17 lawyers, all of whom, are biased against Trump.  Impropriety?  Then the Justice Department Inspector General released his report of extensive wrongdoing inside the FBI.  One might even call it impropriety.  This led to the firings of McCabe and now Strozk, the departure of Lisa Page, and the demotions of other high-ranking FBI officials.  The Inspector General said this “cast a cloud over the FBI investigations to which these employees were assigned.”  Such improper conduct by investigators, would result in the dismissal of criminal charges brought against any anonymous criminal defendant.  I’ll give an example.  I was involved in the clean-up of a situation in which police officers coerced a consent to search from a suspect.  The defendant’s charges were dismissed, he received a monetary settlement, and the police officers went to prison.  Apparently, President Trump is not entitled to the same protections that we afford any nameless, faceless suspect.  The Mueller investigation is tainted, at the most by actual bias, and at the least by a perception of impropriety, which extends far beyond the ability to purge the taint.  Conflicts come up all the time in prosecutor’s offices.  They generally can be managed by walling off those who are conflicted, and permitting non-conflicted people to carry out the investigation.  That won’t work here.  Mueller’s witch hunt is fatally tainted.  He’s found no wrongdoing by the President.  At this point, no matter what he finds is irrelevant.  Whatever he announces will be denounced as the product of bias.