Senate Republicans have been calling on President Obama to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the national security leaks from the White House. This is even more critical in the wake of the Eric Holder contempt vote, as the same Obama-appointed U.S. attorney is now in charge of dealing with the charges against Holder and the investigation into the intelligence leaks.
The most obvious problem is the conflict of interest. It’s doubtful that U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ronald Machen, an Obama appointee, can fairly investigate his own boss (Eric Holder), or his boss’s boss (President Obama) in either the leak cases or the Fast and Furious stonewalling.
But even putting that aside, Machen has now been referred two big, high-profile cases in a matter of weeks, both of which are vital to the public interest. The Washington Post reported last week that Machen already had a full plate, and his staff was overwhelmed with D.C. corruption prosecutions even before the leak case and Holder contempt charge got to his desk:
As if investigating D.C. public corruption wasn’t enough, Machen and his prosecutors were handed another difficult task June 8: spearheading a probe of leaks of classified material to reporters. That assignment came the same day that former D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown (D) pleaded guilty to federal bank fraud charges; Brown resigned just days earlier when he was charged in federal court by prosecutors who, with FBI agents, began by investigating discrepancies in his 2008 council campaign.
Although overall attrition has held steady, Machen has lost at least a half-dozen experienced and respected supervisors. In recent weeks, at least six prosecutors have said they will leave the 35-lawyer homicide unit.
A federal hiring freeze has made it difficult to replace those prosecutors, and those remaining are beginning to complain of burnout.
Can Machen’s office reasonably be expected to give the new workload the attention it deserves? Can he be trusted to pursue these cases fairly? The answer to both questions, at this point, seems to be no.
Maybe Secretary Holder can investigate himself.
Good points all, Ms. Goodman. Well said!
Taking this one step further, I believe that the DC self-government act does *not* include the authority to appoint criminal prosecutors for felonies — unlike in a state, the US Attorney is responsible for prosecuting murders, rapes & such in the District. He thus is not only a traditional US Attorney but also has the role of a State Attorney General *and* District Attorney.– and the related duty to prosecute offenders to give some consolidation and closure to the victims, not to mention making the entire community safer by taking the perps off the streets. n nI know the city is gentrifying, and perhaps Ms. Goodman has the statistics handy, but I believe that DC is disproportionately Black — which means that a significant percentage (majority) of the crime victims will also be black as victims come from the larger population. This means that we are talking about BLACK women who have been raped, BLACK mothers who have had to bury their sons, etc. n nWhich raises two questions — first why the hiring freeze is applied to the attrition losses of this office and why the positions aren't considered "essential" and hence worthy of a one-for-one replacement hiring. Second, a Black POTUS and Black AG not inherently realizing the vital importance of criminal prosecutors to the Black community and protecting that vital need by appointing a special prosecutor? n nRemember, Obama can always FIRE the Special Prosecutor — Nixon did it….
It's not the White House that needs a special prosecutor, it's the bs artists in the House