Probably a good time to post the recent remarks by AG Barr at Hillsdale College:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/remarks-attorney-general-william-p-barr-hillsdale-college-constitution-day-eventI first listened to it on the Hugh Hewitt Show and I think Barr lets us know where things are headed in a very subtle, yet forceful, manner.
Quote:
We are all human. Like any person, a prosecutor can become overly invested in a particular goal. Prosecutors who devote months or years of their lives to investigating a particular target may become deeply invested in their case and assured of the rightness of their cause.
When a prosecution becomes "your prosecution"particularly if the investigation is highly public, or has been acrimonious, or if you are confident early on that the target committed serious crimesthere is always a temptation to will a prosecution into existence even when the facts, the law, or the fair-handed administration of justice do not support bringing charges.
Quote:
In recent years, the Justice Department has sometimes acted more like a trade association for federal prosecutors than the administrator of a fair system of justice based on clear and sensible legal rules. In case after case, we have advanced and defended hyper-aggressive extensions of the criminal law. This is wrong and we must stop doing it.
Quote:
Taking a capacious approach to criminal law is not only unfair to criminal defendants and bad for the Justice Department's track record at the Supreme Court, it is corrosive to our political system. If criminal statutes are endlessly manipulable, then everything becomes a potential crime. Rather than watch policy experts debate the merits or demerits of a particular policy choice, we are nowadays treated to ad naseum speculation by legal pundits often former prosecutors themselves that some action by the President, a senior official, or a member of congress constitutes a federal felony under this or that vague federal criminal statute.
Quote:
The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which mark a gentleman. And those who need to be told would not understand it anyway. A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen's safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.
Reading this speech, my sense is that Barr and his group are going after something much more valuable and necessary than any election result: the long-term viability of the present justice system as a protector of law and order and a guarantor of the protections enshrined to us all in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Those who have spent the last generation abusing those rights in a position of power are those who Barr is truly going after right now. I think he gets it and I truly believe his team understand the necessity for reform as well. This is one reason why we're getting a slower process than we would all like. Better to make certain you have all your ducks in a row if you want to make the punishment fit the crime and leave a lasting and positive impact on the Department of Justice and the manner in which they pursue investigations and prosecutions.