In his latest attack on the Russia investigation, President Donald Trump tweeted, “The appointment of the Special Counsel is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!”

This amounts to Trump’s opinion, and is a matter of debate among constitutional scholars. The Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that the appointment of an independent counsel was constitutional, but the rules and circumstances were a little different then. And the Supreme Court has not spoken directly on the constitutionality of current regulations for special counsels.

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David Sklansky, who teaches criminal law at Stanford, told us it is simply not accurate for the president to claim that the appointment of Mueller was unconstitutional.

“In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled in Morrison v. Olson that the Constitution allowed an Independent Counsel to be appointed by a three-judge court, completely separate from the Executive Branch,” Sklansky said via email. “In reaching that conclusion, the Supreme Court held that an Independent Counsel is an ‘inferior officer,’ not a ‘principal officer,’ for reasons that very clearly apply to Mueller: (a) he can be removed by a higher-ranking Department of Justice official, (b) he is authorized only to investigate and, if appropriate, prosecute, particular federal crimes, not to formulate Department of Justice policy, and (c) his jurisdiction is limited to the matters delegated to him by the Department of Justice.

“The only significant difference between Mueller’s appointment and the appointment scheme for Independent Counsels, upheld by the Supreme Court in Morrison v. Olson, is that Mueller, unlike the Independent Counsels, was appointed by President Trump’s own appointee, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, rather than by a three-judge court,” Sklansky said. “But that just makes the argument for the constitutionality of Mueller’s appointment even stronger. Given the Supreme Court’s ruling in Morrison v. Olson, there is no remotely plausible argument that Mueller’s appointment was unconstitutional.”