# Special Counsel A **special counsel** is a prosecutor appointed by the [[Attorney General]] under **28 C.F.R. Part 600** to investigate a matter the [[Department of Justice]] cannot handle without a conflict of interest. The office exists only by regulation — the Department wrote the rule for itself in 1999 after Congress let the [[Independent Counsel]] statute lapse — and every "shall" in that rule is expressly made unenforceable by anyone under § 600.10. The defining features: the counsel must be selected **from outside the United States Government**; the [[Attorney General]] writes the jurisdiction and is the only person who can expand it; the counsel is not subject to day-to-day supervision but any single investigative step can be countermanded as "so inappropriate or unwarranted under established Departmental practices"; removal is by the **personal action of the Attorney General** on five grounds, the last of which is "other good cause, including violation of Departmental policies"; and the closing report is **confidential** to the Attorney General, whose decision to publish it is discretionary. ⚠️ Not to be confused with the [[Office of Special Counsel]], an unrelated independent agency under 5 U.S.C. § 1211 that handles federal whistleblower retaliation and the [[Hatch Act]]. The name collision is the most common error on this subject. ## The roster Every Part 600 appointment to date: | Year | Counsel | Appointed by | Matter | How it ended | |---|---|---|---|---| | 2017 | [[Robert Mueller]] | Rosenstein (acting for a recused Sessions) | Russian interference and the Trump campaign | [[Mueller Report]], March 2019; see [[Mueller Report Release]] | | 2020 | [[John Durham]] | Barr | Origins of the Russia investigation (converted from a U.S. Attorney review) | [[Durham Report]], May 2023; one guilty plea, two acquittals | | 2022 | [[Jack Smith]] | Garland | Mar-a-Lago documents; January 6 | Both cases dismissed after the 2024 election; resigned January 2025; [[Jack Smith Report]] (Volume I public, [[Jack Smith Report Volume II]] suppressed) | | 2023 | [[Robert Hur]] | Garland | Biden classified documents | [[Hur Report]], February 2024, no charges | | 2023 | [[David Weiss]] | Garland | Hunter Biden (Weiss was already the U.S. Attorney — see [[Mar-a-Lago Documents Case]] for the [[Appointments Clause]] argument) | Convictions, then a pardon; resigned January 2025; [[Weiss Report]] | All of these reports, and the [[Starr Report]] from the [[Independent Counsel]] era before them, are indexed as official reports on the [[Reports Hub]]. **Since January 2025 there has been no Part 600 appointment.** [[Pam Bondi]] said at her confirmation that she would use the device sparingly, and [[Aileen Cannon]]'s 2024 ruling that Smith's appointment violated the [[Appointments Clause]] — an [[Inferior Officer]] must be appointed under a statute, and Part 600 is only a regulation — remains the standing argument against the whole mechanism from the right. Democratic demands for a special counsel (March 2025 on the Signal chat; February 2026 accusing Bondi of perjury over the Epstein files) went unanswered. The vault's working observation: the office was built to be *unenforceable by design* (§ 600.10), and an Attorney General who declines to appoint one faces no legal consequence — the constraint was always political. The alternative the Department has used instead is the § 515 "special attorney" — an ordinary DOJ appointment with no independence, no outside-government requirement and no report. It is what Durham was before his conversion. ## See Also - [[Special Counsel Appointment and Removal Flow]] — the full process map - [[Independent Counsel]] — the statutory predecessor, 1978–1999 - [[Office of Special Counsel]] — the unrelated agency with the same name - [[Ethics in Government Act]] · [[Appointments Clause]] · [[Inferior Officer]] - [[Mueller Investigation]] · [[Mar-a-Lago Documents Case]]