Nationwide protests planned if President Trump moves against Mueller or Rosenstein

Fredreka Schouten | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — More than 360,000 people have committed to take to the streets in nationwide protests should President Trump fire special counsel Robert Mueller or Rod Rosenstein, the Justice Department official overseeing Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

A coalition of roughly 100 mostly liberal groups is helping plan the 900 demonstrations, which organizers say would launch within hours of the firing or other significant action to thwart the investigation.

“No one is hoping for a constitutional crisis,” said David Sievers, campaign director of MoveOn, one of the groups behind the “Nobody is Above the Law” demonstrations. “But we have to be ready for one.”

Although Trump routinely denounces Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt,” he and his allies have denied that the president is any rush to take action against Mueller. “We have no intention of firing the special counsel,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters this week.

Trump himself wouldn’t say whether he would ever fire Mueller or Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, when asked last week. “They’ve been saying I’m going to get rid of them for the last three months, four months, five months, and they’re still here,” Trump said during a news conference. “So, we want to get this investigation over with, done with. Put it behind us.”

But protesters are taking the threat seriously.

Bob Anderson, a 94-year-old retired lawyer in Emeryville, Calif., has never protested before. But if Trump acts to thwart the investigation, the decorated World War II reconnaissance pilot says he will don his old Army Air Corps uniform and head to city hall in nearby Berkeley to protest.

“I want to stand up and be counted,” said Anderson, a Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. “If I don’t do it now, when? At 94, the clock is ticking.”

“The more (Trump) fusses about the ‘Russian witch hunt,’ the more a reasonable person wonders ‘Hey, what have you got to hide?’ ” Anderson said.

White House officials did not immediately respond to requests for comments about the planned demonstrations.

Dramatic growth

About a dozen groups, including MoveOn and Public Citizen, began protest preparations last summer in the months after Trump fired then-FBI director James Comey, who was overseeing the Russian investigation. Their numbers have grown dramatically in the months since and have expanded to include the American Federation of Teachers, the Sierra Club, Service Employees International Union and Common Defense, a veterans’ group.

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The numbers of activists joining the protest network also has grown. About 40,000 people have registered for the protests in the weeks since the FBI’s April 9 raid on the home and offices of Trump’s longtime attorney, Michael Cohen, said Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs for Public Citizen, one of the groups planning the demonstrations.

Participants sign up online for the demonstrations, which are planned in all 50 states, the nation’s capital and U.S. territories. The protests will be triggered by key events, such as the firing of Mueller or Rosenstein, repealing the regulations that established the special counsel’s office or pardoning key witnesses.

If one of those “red lines” is crossed before 2 p.m., protests are scheduled to start at 5 p.m. If events happen after 2 p.m., the demonstrations move to noon the following day.

At least one police department has taken note of the plans. Last week, the Pittsburgh Police Department ordered its plainclothes detectives to start bringing uniforms and riot gear to work because of “a potential large-scale protest” in the city’s center should Trump force out Mueller.

In a statement, Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich said officials are simply preparing for a potential protest as they would for “extreme weather.”

About 4,000 people have signed up so far in Pittsburgh, said Tracy Baton, a 54-year-old social worker who is helping organize the Mueller-focused demonstrations in the city.

Baton, who directs Women’s March events in Pittsburgh, said she expects any protests that occur to be peaceful and already has worked with city officials to move the demonstration to 6 p.m., instead of the 5 p.m. start time planned in other cities, to avoid rush-hour disruptions.

“We have had no problems in the past, and I have no reason to believe we will in the future,” she said of the possible Pittsburgh event.

Sustained lobbying

As they wait for protests that may never come, organizers are encouraging activists to engage in other actions, including lobbying Capitol Hill to pass bipartisan legislation to protect Mueller.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is slated to take up that measure Thursday, despite opposition from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

The bill says that Mueller or any future special counsel can only be fired "for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or other good cause." A special counsel who is fired could appeal to the courts to be reinstated.

In their planning calls every Friday, protest organizers also are plotting out what steps they would take to pressure the Republican-controlled Congress after a Mueller or Rosenstein firing. That includes asking the Senate to set up a Watergate-style select committee to investigate.

“This can’t be a single moment of protest,” Public Citizens’ Gilbert said. “The effort has to be sustained.”

Contributing: Erin Kelly