It also leaves open the possibility of prosecuting those CIA officials who were torturing detainees before the POTUS legal team created the CYA memos in the first place.
Yes, or who were more aggressive or otherwise outside the ambit of what had been approved in the memos. Sen. Whitehouse discussed this briefly on the Rachel Maddow Show a few nights ago.
I for one have no objection to prosecuting the people who did the torture so long as we also prosecute those who ordered it.
–Cliffy
I don’t get this part. Isn’t the President the highest executive officer in the land? Doesn’t the Attorney General work for him?
The President can fire the AG, but he can’t tell him what to do?
The president is not supposed to interfere in the Justice Department’s decisions regarding criminal prosecutions and investigations. That’s a non-political function of the Justice Department.
What acsenray said. The President does not get to tell the Attorney General who to prosecute. I guess we can thank the previous administration for the idea that the AG is the President’s employee and legal hatchet man.
This seems to implicitly assume that the president is inherently political & that the Justice Department is not. I would question that.
In addition, once you take that approach, maybe the president shouldn’t be involved in anything at all, and the entire government should be run by apolitical bureaucrats. Do you want Defense Ministry decisions to be political? Education decisions?
Most of these departments are headed by political appointees and staffed by career civil servants. There’s a reason for that.
It’s a pretty well-established principle of American government, at least, that decisions regarding criminal prosecutions should not be influenced by other elected officials and political officers.
Well, there are three branches of government, see…
That doesn’t address the question.
Cite?
Did it escape you that the outrage over the Bush administration firings of U.S. attorneys was about attempts by the administration to influence decisions by federal prosecutors on when and if to bring criminal indictments? It is generally not accepted as legitimate for the executive to manage criminal prosecution.
Trying to follow this. So, if I understand correctly, there was no reversal here. Obama is merely reverting things to the way they were wrt prosecutions to the pre-Bush stance of the President…yes?
-XT
It does addresse your argument ad absurdum. Generally speaking the philosophies at these departments come from elected officials at the top, and they’re staffed by trained civil servants who are supposed to know the nuts and bolts of how the job is done and by somewhat immune to political pressure since they bureaucrats and not political appointees. I think it’s a fairly good principle, although I recognize that esteemed people like Monica Goodling don’t agree.
Acsenray,
People get outraged about a lot of things especially when it comes to Bush.
Plus, the accusation in that case was that the firings were made for specifically political reasons, i.e. failure to prosecute Democrats (or something of the sort) not because they were made by a political person.
People arguing your position in this thread seem to be arguing that it’s Eric Holder’s decision, while Alberto Gonzalez (who ocupied the same office) was the guy criticized back then. Because it was the rationale, not the position.
Let me try this again.
Do you think the president should not be involved in decisions about the Defense or Education departments?
That’s okay, I don’t think we need to try it again. You’ve successfully proved that if taken to absurd extremes, it would be a bad idea. Unfortunately that was obvious at the beginning and nobody said otherwise.
The AG reflects the president’s judicial philosophy and the head of (for example) the department of education reflects his views on education. But I wouldn’t want the president telling the AG who to prosecute and I wouldn’t want him making up questions for a standardized test for fourth graders either. I’m not sure how the education or defense departments could be politicized quite the same way prosecutions can - you can’t go after your political enemies with frivolous education, as far as I know - but that’s the best comparison I can think of at the moment.
Whether to prosecute former CIA or legal people involved in torture is the type of major policy decision that presidents routinely involve themselves in at Defense, Education and other departments. It’s not remotely comparable to making up questions for a test.
Mary Jo White was a U.S. attorney in the Clinton administration. In this interview with Newsweek, she says –
The protocol is that the White House and the Congress are not supposed to have direct contact with federal prosecutors regarding specific cases. What does that mean? The implication is that the White House is not supposed to communicate to prosecutors its wishes regarding when or if charges are laid in any particular case.
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There is a difference between “someone in the White House” and the POTUS. The POTUS is the direct boss of the AG. “Someone in the WH” is just a connected guy.
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You yourself say “specific cases”. We are not at the point of “specific cases” at this time. The decision here is a policy one, about a broader category of prosecutions.
“The White House” pretty clearly includes the president or someone acting on his or her instructions.