NPR interviewed a former Justice Department official, Steve Saltzburg, a law professor, about how the department chooses targets for federal charges. After all, the interviewer notes, DOJ has gone after Roger Clemens and John Edwards but not after Wall Street.
NPR: Let's start with Roger Clemens. Nina Totenberg reported here that it took a week to seat a jury because so many potential jurors said they thought the trial was a waste of federal dollars. Is it?
SALTZBURG: In many ways it is. I think in large part because a lot of people wonder what Congress was doing investigating Major League Baseball and the use of steroids. It hardly seemed like good use of congressional time.
NPR: Clemens, as a witness, is charged with lying to a congressional committee that didn't seem to be preparing legislation. The Republic wasn't deprived of some important law because he lied, if he did.
SALTZBURG: That's true. The reason for prosecuting is if the American people believes that Roger Clemens was not telling the truth, and the message goes out that you are free to lie under oath - even to Congress - it's a pretty bad message for the American people to get.
NPR: So if you were sitting in on that decision, the consequences you're considering are do we want to create such a glaring exception to such an important principle.
SALTZBURG: That's exactly right. When you prosecute a high-profile figure, like Roger Clemens, you know the publicity will be massive. And if there's a conviction, that the message will go out that no one - no matter how important they are - is free to lie under oath in any proceeding. ...NPR
It's about government flexing its muscles? Sounds that way...
NPR: Well, then there's the case of John Edwards, whose misdeeds are manifest. But he's on trial for violating campaign finance laws that have since been effectively gutted by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case. I mean, can you imagine the discussion of justice over whether to proceed with the trial of former Senator Edwards?
SALTZBURG: I think it's a much harder case to defend. The campaign finance laws are technical to start with. There's a plausible explanation for why someone would want to use money to cover up a private secret, having nothing to do with the campaign. And it's hard to imagine that this prosecution, even if successful, will send a message to anybody that will be clear.
NPR: I mean, one question that I've heard raised about these cases is that, by way of contrast, there have been hardly any prosecutions of any Wall Street bank or banker for practices that could be construed as criminal violations. Is this a case - when you decide to prosecute one of these cases, are you, because of finite resources, deciding not to prosecute some other case?
SALTZBURG: Inevitably when you make a decision to charge, particularly in case that's going to be difficult to prove and will require a lot of resources, you are inevitably deciding that there are other cases that you will not be able to pursue. ...NPR
And don't want to pursue? Because both major parties depend heavily on the support of those legal targets?
NPR: But from what you're saying, it would at least be arguable, for either Roger Clemens or John Edwards to say, if I were named Joe Schmoe, I wouldn't be sitting here in federal court today.
SALTZBURG: I believe that's true in both cases. On the other hand, if Joe Schmoe were called to testify, it would never be about steroids and baseball. The only reason that the hearing was held was because the baseball players who were called to testify were all high-profile figures in the first place. ...NPR
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What else-- and who else -- is Justice pursuing? And how political are these choices?
Well, there's a battle going on between Congressional Republicans and Attorney General Eric Holder.
Republican House leaders have drafted a proposed contempt of Congress citation against Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. in which they charge that he and his Justice Department have repeatedly "obstructed and slowed" the Capitol Hill investigation into the ATF's flawed Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation. ...LATimes
That one is really nothing more than a continuing effort on the part of Darryl Issa who wants to bring down the president.
Earlier this week Issa called the Obama White House "the most corrupt in government history." ...LATimes
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The Department of Justice has favorites.
The record of the Anti-trust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice over the last 40 years has been a sorry one. Sometimes it goes after companies that have done nothing wrong, but more often it lets big-time antitrust violators get away with murder. In a recent case -- one that has roiled the publishing industry -- the DOJ has managed to do both. The Justice Department is hounding MacMillan and Penguin Publishers, even though those companies and other publishers have done nothing more than try to protect their business from the unfair tactics of Amazon.com. In the meantime, the DOJ has given Amazon a green light to continue on its path towards monopolization of the book business.
News coverage of the DOJ's case has been almost uniformly critical. (The Atlantic Monthly's April 12 article was entitled "The Justice Department Just Made Jeff Bezos Dictator-for-Life"). ...William Petrocelli, HuffPo
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BP and other mammoth energy corporations are bound to be on the friends-of-government list, in spite of their actions. So it's no surprise, really, that DOJ has targeted a single engineer to charge in connection with the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf.
The Justice Department on Tuesday unveiled the first criminal charges in its investigation of the 2010 BP oil spill: two counts of obstruction of justice filed against a former BP engineer accused of destroying records describing the rate at which oil was flowing from the broken well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. ...
...The charges did not offer much of a hint as to how extensive the criminal reckoning could eventually be. ...LATimes
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DOJ is suffering from (putting up with?) hedging on the part of the state of Texas.
Justice Department lawyers have requested a delay in the trial over the Texas voter identification law, saying the state has repeatedly blocked requests for information. ...AP
Texas' new legislation is likely to prevent Hispanics from voting in November. Maybe the DOJ will get the job done in time for the election. Maybe not.
