Trust ‘Em?

by digby

Via Christy’s righteously indignant post this morning, I read this column from the Chicago Tribune on the ramifications of Rove’s influence on the justice department:

A DOJ process that exalts partisan political loyalty over independence and fairness is a fundamentally flawed one. Political blinders are critical to a prosecutor because, without them, important decisions about how cases are investigated and prosecuted can be hijacked by improper considerations with tangible (even tragic) consequences. Naturally, this is most critical in political corruption cases, the legitimacy of which hinges on the political independence of the prosecutive team’s work.

It reminded me of something that someone said the day that the Department of Justice raided Congressman Jefferson’s office. Everyone knew that Jefferson was worthy of suspicion, but members of both parties protested the raid because of the separation of powers issues it raised. It was, in fact, unprecedented, as such issues had previously been dealt with by the more common use of subpoenas rather than a Saturday afternoon raid which resulted in the DOJ seizing Jefferson’s papers and computers.

Most people at the time thought the bipartisan congressional hoopla was ridiculous. Here we had a sitting congressman who had been found with piles of cash in his freezer. Are you telling us that the FBI doesn’t have the power to go into his office and seize his papers? It sounds rather absurd.

Here’s what I wrote about it at the time:

I am quite sure that Congressman Jefferson is nobody I want to defend (for his politics and much as his criminality.) But the FBI and the executive branch have a long sordid history of using their power for political ends. (Even Hoover never believed they could raid a congressman’s office, however.)

Recently, the FBI’s conservative culture has led to some in the bureau covertly helping Republicans as we saw during the Clinton years. Convicted spy Robert Hanssen had a relationship with Robert Novak that seemed to be based upon his political loathing of Janet Reno, although as with so many of these cases, it’s hard to tell what motivates individuals. But history shows that the FBI can be used by any party for nefarious purposes which is bad enough and requires constant vigilance and oversight. When it is used for partisan reasons directly against the congress you have a problem of an even greater dimension.

The reason to be against this is political (and constitutional), not legal. It’s entirely possible that the warrant they got was proper and that their cause is just. And I have no doubt that Hastert had a hissy fit and got Bush to seal the documents to cover his own ample ass. But the bigger issue is something that someone wrote in an email a couple of days ago:

This Republican Justice Department, led by a lifetime Bush loyalist and good friend to Karl Rove now has every Democratic strategy memo that ever came across Congressman Jefferson’s desk. Trust ’em?

Uh, no.

It never really made much sense to me that of the long line of GOP corruption cases that came through the congress in past few years, the only one in which the DOJ took the unprecedented step of raiding their congressional office and seizing their papers was the lone Democrat. Very odd, don’t you think?

.