Why did the Department of Justice appoint two prosecutors to lead its leak investigations? That’s the question Sen. Jon Kyl asked Eric Holder during his testimony at yesterday’s Senate Judiciary hearing. Holder gave a hopelessly vague and evasive answer, but Kyl’s question is worth asking again, given what we know about the two U.S. Attorneys.
One of these prosecutors, Ronald Machen, is an Obama appointee who donated $4,350 to the Obama campaign, as the blog Fire Andrea Mitchell pointed out. The other is a holdover Bush appointee, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein.
So one Bush appointee and one Obama donor should balance each other out, right? Actually, no — not necessarily. The DOJ has opened two separate leak investigations with different scopes, and the prosecutors could be asked to lead them separately.
Here is why this could pose a problem. So far, we have no official word on which leaks each of these probes will be looking into — remember, there have been multiple leaks recently, including the drone “Kill List,” the Flame cyberattack, and the al-Qaeda affiliate story. Will one prosecutor be investigating the Flame story, while another looks into the al-Qaeda Yemen disclosure? We don’t know, and Holder has refused to say.
But, based on a recent Wall Street Journal report, it appears that neither of the two DOJ investigations include the New York Times’s “Kill List” story — the most overtly political and pro-Obama article out of the bunch. Lawfare Blog’s Jack Goldstein draws this conclusion:
If the WSJ is right, it would appear that the investigations do not concern leaks about drone attacks and related matters that, like leaks about the Iranian cyber-operation and the AQAP infiltration, have been the subject of recent congressional complaint. That would make the leak investigations relatively narrow, and would be relatively good news for the White House since, according to Daniel Klaidman’s book and other indications, some White House officials have participated in disclosure of some of the classified information related to drone attacks.
The Journal reports that one of the investigations is focused on the al-Qaeda Yemen affiliate story, and the other is on the Iranian cyberattack story.
It seems unlikely that the al-Qaeda informant leak was politically motivated, even if it was put out there by high-level administration officials. But the Times’s Iranian cyberattack story was a different beast altogether. From the headline to the Situation Room details, the leaks were clearly a) from top administration officials, and b) intended to make Obama look as good as possible.
In other words, the Iranian cyberattack investigation seems much, much more likely to uncover damaging revelations about the White House than the al-Qaeda informant probe. The question is, will both prosecutors be leading the Iranian cyberattack probe? And if not, which one will the DOJ put in charge of it — the Bush appointee or the Obama donor?
Ms. Goodman appears to be making a presumption here that I would not make — that the fact that one is a Bush Appointee means that one is anything other than a leftist Democrat Obama supporter. n nI will defer to Ms. Goodman's judgment call if she *knows* that this guy is a conservative or a Republican or anything other than a politically flexible RINO, but there are way too many of those out there and the mere fact that GWB appointed you to something does not itself alone mean anything! n nMy gut feeling — and Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) was saying this the other day herself – we are looking at Watergate Part Deux. Alana, is it true that the guy who "gave us" Bin Laden is now serving 30 years in a Packi prison? That is a really bad precedent if true — not exactly the sort of thing that makes one inclined to want to help us….
This is why there needs to be an independent prosecutor. No brainer! It's obvious the handling of these leaks will be done according to what helps BHO. These people continue to play the American people as fools.
Machen and Rosenstein report to whom? Eric Holder, Barack Obama's Attorney General. n nThese guys are simply not independent investigators. n
It would appear that Eric Holder’s decision is heavily infused with politics. This was done to allay the calls of lawmakers to take action. Now, since Holder, in a way, interned at the feet of Janet Reno, he has mastered the art of obfuscation and the magician’s hand trick. The independence, breadth and depth of these two appointees depend on the specific investigatory authority that Holder has placed in the hands of either man; so precisely what you’ll find will depend on which man’s hand you touch. n nFurther, Holder made these appointments in order to secure Democratic Senators support in stymieing Republicans calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor. On this score, he succeeded; as Diane Feinstein and other Democratic Senators promptly announced their opposition to the appointment of a special prosecutor. n nSo he has in essence provided Mr. Obama with political cover just like Janet Reno did for Mr Clinton regarding many perceived infractions such as those of Mr. Gore. Over at NRO Andrew McCarthy reminds us of how Mr. Holder corrupted the pardon process during Clinton final stanza in office