Former DOJ officials call on Attorney General Barr to resign

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Former DOJ officials call on Attorney General Barr to resign
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 1,000 former U.S. Justice Department officials on Sunday called for Attorney General William Barr to resign over his handling of the trial of a longtime adviser of President Donald Trump.

The former officials, who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations, criticized Barr, the country’s top law enforcement officer, for overruling his own prosecutors in a case that has prompted accusations that the Trump administration is weakening the rule of law.

You may read the letter here:

All DOJ lawyers are well-versed in these rules, regulations, and constitutional commands. They stand for the proposition that political interference in the conduct of a criminal prosecution is anathema to the Department’s core mission and to its sacred obligation to ensure equal justice under the law.

And yet, President Trump and Attorney General Barr have openly and repeatedly flouted this fundamental principle, most recently in connection with the sentencing of President Trump’s close associate, Roger Stone, who was convicted of serious crimes. The Department has a long-standing practice in which political appointees set broad policies that line prosecutors apply to individual cases. That practice exists to animate the constitutional principles regarding the even-handed application of the law. Although there are times when political leadership appropriately weighs in on individual prosecutions, it is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case. It is even more outrageous for the Attorney General to intervene as he did here — after the President publicly condemned the sentencing recommendation that line prosecutors had already filed in court.

Such behavior is a grave threat to the fair administration of justice. In this nation, we are all equal before the law. A person should not be given special treatment in a criminal prosecution because they are a close political ally of the President. Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.

I wonder if Kyle can read that last sentence? I wonder if any of the cult understand it?
 

Merlin99

Visualize whirled peas
PREMO Member
wow, they found a bunch of lefties to say Trump’s bad. I bet that was difficult.
 
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Bird Dog

Bird Dog
PREMO Member
I found 1,000,000 Progs who want to see Trumps head on a spike in the South Lawn........
 

officeguy

Well-Known Member
The AG is the lead prosecutor. Reining in rogue people at the lower rungs of the organization is his job.
 

Yooper

Up. Identified. Lase. Fire. On the way.
Counter-point:

From about one-third in:
First, as I’ve written before, Trump is the head of the executive branch. The Department of Justice is not an independent branch of government. Nobody at the DOJ stands for an election. Only through the president can the voters reach and control the awesome power of the federal criminal prosecutor. Second, the president has the un-appealable constitutional power to cancel any federal prosecution—even before the trial.

On Feb. 10, holdovers from the lawless reign of terror known as the Robert Mueller probe filed a sentencing memorandum recommending nine years in prison for their political target, Stone.

The closing paragraphs:
As usual, the media have completely inverted the “rule of law” principles at stake. Former prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg penned an article in the Washington Post insisting that, “being asked by that leadership to allow politics to corrode our work is not remotely normal or permissible. And it is treacherous.” There we go again: a president commits “treason” by questioning his bureaucratic underlings.

Rosenberg added, “What political leadership did here — mandating a favor for a friend of the president in line with the president’s publicly expressed desire in the case — significantly damages the rule of law and the perception of Justice Department fairness.”

Rosenberg has it exactly backward. The rule of law provides for presidential oversight when prosecutors run amuck. Political accountability for these prosecutors was long overdue.

Critics, of course, respond with clever rhetoric that attempts to conflate proper presidential oversight with improper presidential conduct so that they can say Trump is wrong. Sorry, won't play that game; I agree with the author of this The Federalist article.

--- End of line (MCP)
 
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