https://themessenger.com/opinion/wheres-a-special-counsel-when-you-need-one
Some people say nothing is certain in this life. I beg to differ, and I defy anyone to show that I have this wrong: If Donald Trump were president, and one of his sons had been under investigation by his Department of Justice (DOJ) for several years with no action, and his attorney general had stubbornly declined to appoint a special counsel — lamely contending that there was no insuperable conflict of interest for the president’s Justice Department to investigate the president’s son — that would be the lead story in nearly every press outlet. The outrage in Washington would be palpable.
Of course, it wouldn’t come to that. The media-Democrat complex drumbeat would be too tirelessly cacophonous. Conservative pundits would concede that, while they were generally skeptical of special counsels, the Justice Department is bound by regulations to appoint one when there are (a) good-faith grounds for an investigation or prosecution, and (b) a conflict of interest that prevents the Justice Department from credibly investigating or prosecuting the matter in the normal course.
Congressional Democrats would inveigh on the Capitol steps, in its hearing rooms, and in ceaseless cable TV interviews from the Rotunda, that a special counsel must be appointed — and, if not, then the attorney general should be held in contempt of Congress or perhaps even impeached. It would not take long before the Republican-controlled Justice Department wilted, just as the Trump Justice Department did in 2017, amid the hysteria of the “Russiagate” farce and the equally nonsensical claim that Trump’s firing of then-FBI director James Comey amounted to an “obstruction” of the supposed Russia-collusion caper (i.e., the investigation that the FBI knew by then was baseless, according to the Durham Report). And just as the Bush DOJ did in 2003, in response to a manufactured controversy over the leak of a CIA officer’s identity (under circumstances where investigators already knew who the leaker was and that the leak had not violated federal law).