Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Re: Attorneys   [Andy McCarthy]

I am just back from a delightful Federalist Society event in Atlanta (debating detainees) and still catching up on today's events. 

Mark is right.  In 18 years as a prosecutor I served under six different U.S. attorneys.  The cases are investigated and prosecuted by the assistant U.S. attorneys.  In all the changes of administrations I experienced, I can't remember a single time when the transition resulted in a major investigation — especially a corruption investigation — being shut down.  Certainly different U.S. attorneys had different priorities, but (as I've noted many times) law enforcement, when it is done properly, is not ideological or political, and corruption is piggy no matter who is engaged in it.  When I ran the satellite U.S. Attorney's Office in White Plains, we prosecuted a top Republican in Dutchess Country and a top Democrat in Rockland; my prosecutors were conservatives and liberals ... didn't make a damn bit of difference.  Felonies look the same no matter who's committing them, and law enforcement professionals go about their business professionally no matter what their political views may be.

New U.S. attorneys just don't come in an knock over all the furniture — not as a rule.  What I think is most regrettable about this controversy is that the political nature of U.S. attorney appointments (which are virtually always political) is being conflated with the day-to-day work of U.S. attorneys' offices (which is virtually never politcal).  Democrats should take heed.  They are surely entitled to score political points given the clumsiness with which this situation has been handled.  But they should bear in mind that they, too, have a stake in the well-deserved good reputation of the Justice Department.  They shouldn't make this worse than it is or gratuitously undermine people's confidence in the basic rectitude of the system.

03/20 09:28 PMShare