Kenneth Starr: Mr. President, please cut it out
By Kenneth W. Starr July 26 at 6:54 PM
Kenneth W. Starr, a former U.S. solicitor general and federal judge, served as independent counsel in the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations during the Clinton administration.
Mr. President, please cut it out. Tweet to your hearts content, but stop the wildly inappropriate attacks on the attorney general. An honorable man whom I have known since his days as a U.S. attorney in Alabama, Jeff Sessions has recently become your piñata in one of the most outrageous and profoundly misguided courses of presidential conduct I have witnessed in five decades in and around the nations capital. What you are doing is harmful to your presidency and inimical to our foundational commitment as a free people to the rule of law.
The attorney general is not and cannot be the presidents hockey goalie, as new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci described Sessionss job. In fact, the president isnt even his client. To the contrary, the attorney generals client is ultimately We the People, and his fidelity has to be not to the president but to the Constitution and other laws of the United States. Indeed, the attorney generals job, at times, is to tell the president no because of the supervening demands of the law. When it comes to dealing with the nations top legal officer, you will do well to check your Twitter weapons at the Oval Office door.
A rich history buttresses my uninvited but from-the-heart advice. In the wake of President Richard Nixons resignation, the colorful Sen.?Sam Ervin (D-N.C.) a hero of the long Watergate ordeal held hearings on a newly minted proposal to create an independent Justice Department, along the lines of other independent agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission. The idea was simple: Especially in the wake of the Nixon-era scandals infecting it, the department should, to the fullest extent possible, be insulated from raw political considerations in the enforcement of the nations laws.
Although nobly intended, Ervins reform proposal went nowhere. But along the way, a national civics lesson unfolded. One of the teachers, so to speak, was Ted Sorensen, President John F. Kennedys legendary speechwriter. In the hearings on the proposal, Sorensen spoke eloquently about the need for the president to have trust in the attorney general but at the same time for the attorney general to remain at arms length in providing honest legal guidance to the president.
This represents a paradox. As a member of the presidents Cabinet, the attorney general needs to be a loyal member of the presidents team, yet at the same time he must have the personal integrity and courage to tell the president what the law demands and what the law will not permit. Thats especially true with respect to enforcing the nations criminal laws, and why rightly the attorney general needs to step aside on matters where his own independence of judgment has potentially been compromised.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kenneth-starr-mr-president-please-cut-it-out/2017/07/26/b9af0c78-723e-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html
salin
(48,955 posts)I want to click recommend, as these are important words being written for Trump (who won't read them), but all these years later, I just can't click the r for Ken Starr.
Thanks for posting this.
tanyev
(42,554 posts)Interesting.
Canoe52
(2,948 posts)Lucky Luciano
(11,254 posts)BigmanPigman
(51,590 posts)Master_Monstruwacan
(71 posts)...but you lost me at your description of Sessions as "an honorable man." He's no more honorable than his Orange POS boss. So, yeah, fuck you.
heather blossom
(174 posts)He has no credibility. From his deranged Clinton prosecution to hiding the Baylor sexual assaults, he is a despicable human being.
dalton99a
(81,485 posts)Canoe52
(2,948 posts)dalton99a
(81,485 posts)Gothmog
(145,195 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Starr needs to clean up his own fucking house down in Waco
Skittles
(153,160 posts)hearing the king of witch hunts telling another buffoon to cut it out