In July of last year, Trump told the Times that, if Mueller started looking into his finances in ways that didn’t relate to Russia, he would regard it as a violation of the special counsel’s mandate. On Tuesday afternoon, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, suggested that Trump had the power to get rid of Mueller without going through the Justice Department. Many independent legal experts believe that Trump would have to order Rod Rosenstein, the deputy Attorney General, who is overseeing the Russia investigation, to terminate Mueller. If Rosenstein refused, Trump would have to fire him and then proceed down the chain of command at the Department of Justice until he found someone willing to carry out the order.