I realize I don’t have 100,000 followers and I’m not regularly on the news, but I still think this is an important clarification to make. Rod didn’t ask for 100 prosecutors - he asked for AUSAs. That is different. Civil AUSAs do critical work too, and they are also being asked /1
To participate in the Kavanaugh project. I believe we have to be accurate in noting what is crazy and what is usual, as well as being super accurate. DOJ has over 11,000 attorneys. Some are prosecutors and some are not. Using prosecutors for vetting would be extra odd, when /2
There are thousands of attorneys who are not prosecutors who could work on the cases. So the story is more nutty if Rod only asked for prosecutors. I saw a copy of what went to the US Attorneys about allowing AUSAs to work on the Kavanaugh documents. It is fair to assume that /3
A similar email went to the litigating divisions as well, for them to allow their attorneys to help the project. Why does it matter? Because during the Obama administration, we did a similar request from the DAG’s office for attorneys to work on the Clemency Project. We asked /4
For attorneys from the US attorneys’ offices and from the litigating divisions to be allowed to help on clemency which at the time was a WH priority. We recruited detailees to the Pardon attorney’s office to more quickly comb through clemency applications. The request for /5
Clemency detailees came from the Deputy Attorney General and then we had to post the jobs on the DOJ Office of Attorney Recruitment & Management intranet (internal to DOJ) website, conduct interviews, and do appropriate government paperwork. Even though the DAG made the ask, /6
Most litigating Assistant Attorneys General and most US Attorneys didn’t rush to send their allotted resources (ie attorneys) to work on the clemency project. So even though MANY were requested by the DAG, it took MANY months to fill those slots & it was hard to find attorneys /7
To agree to do the work and whose bosses (ie US attorneys) allowed them to work on the clearly “political” White House priority. When I see Rod asking for 100 AUSAs, I see him satisfying a request from the White House to help the Kavanaugh vetting. I also promise you Rod does /8
NOT expect to actually fill those 100 Attorney jobs to help the vetting. He also knows it will take a large chunk of time to get attorneys through the process to help on the project. But it is a priority of the White House so it is Rod’s job to do his best to get help to get /9
The vetting done in a timely manner. My takeaway from Rod’s call for 100 AUSAs is that he did what he needed to do to help the WH & help DOJ Office of Legal Policy get some help. He didn’t just ask for prosecutors, he asked for AUSAs who include non-criminal attys. We need /10
To separate the crazy and the unusual from the not so crazy. This to me is not a scandal. It’s not Rod gone rogue or even Republicans doing something nefarious. I think it’s critical to not get so caught up with every single thing. Kavanaugh is bad enough. Eyes on the prize. END
