Obama recognizes: whether to prosecute is not his decision - Greenwald

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/21/prosecutions/index.html

"One of the central principles of our justice system is supposed to be that specific decisions about Justice Department prosecutions are to be made independent of all political considerations, including the White House's political agenda or the President's political interests...


...It is the duty of the Justice Department, and ultimately the Attorney General, to make those decisions based strictly on legal considerations, and independent of the political interests of the White House. Whether or not Obama favors prosecutions is really irrelevant, and one could almost reasonably argue that the increasingly aggressive pressure he and his aides, such as Rahm Emanuel, have been exerting to impede prosecutions was becoming improper. Given the magnitude of these questions, I think it's unreasonable to argue that the President should refrain entirely from opining on such questions, but the line of propriety can easily be crossed and -- especially with the recent comments of Emanuel and Robert Gibbs all but decreeing that there would be no prosecutions -- that line was starting to be broached.

DOJ lawyers tend to safeguard their apolitical independence rather vigilantly -- at least the honest ones do -- and there has to be some growing resistance inside the DOJ to the idea that decisions about whether to prosecute will be dictated to them by political officials in the White House, including the President. Clearly, Obama today -- in the face of rapidly rising pressure to investigate -- seems to have re-considered that approach. Obama just plainly contradicted what Rahm Emanuel said over the weekend and what Robert Gibbs said yesterday when he announced this afternoon -- appropriately so -- that the decision of whether to prosecute Bush lawyers who authorized torture ("those who formulated those legal decisions") was one for the Attorney General, and not Obama, to make, and that Obama did not want to "prejudge" that question..."


Senior Justice Department Lawyers are INCENSED at the WH

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8362937&mesg_id=8362937



"...Members of the White House press corps struggled to explain the shift, many of them suggesting that Obama was pandering to his political base. But the winds of change blew in from an address just down Pennsylvania Avenue. The Daily Beast has learned that senior Justice Department lawyers were “incensed” at the Emanuel and Gibbs statements, as one put it—not because they disagreed with Obama’s apparent opposition to an investigation and prosecution, but because the statements violated well-established rules separating political figures in the White House from decisions about active criminal cases. The statements were viewed as a frontal assault on the autonomy and independence of the criminal-justice system..."

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1. kick nt