The media has been selling the notion that the Department of Justice is "independent" of the President as the Federal Reserve is independent. Here is the latest quote from ASSOCIATED PRESS. @AP
@AP "Barr’s spokeswoman said Tuesday night that the attorney general had 'no plans to resign.' Still, former officials called on Barr to step down from his post after what they see as an erosion of the Justice Department’s historical independence."
@AP As to the alleged "historical independence" of the Department of Justice, I hate to tell the folks at the Associated Press, but the Department of Justice is not today, nor has it ever been, independent of the President of the United States.
@AP In fact, that has been, as we will see, something Congress has always known. From time-to-time, a problem has arisen when some famous, or infamous, incidents have taken place when this lack of independence of the DOJ was widely discussed.
@AP The Department of Justice, an institution not mentioned once in the Constitution of the United States of America, is the instrument of the Executive Branch, in other words the President,
@AP in carrying out some of the definitive responsiblities of the Office of the President as described in ARTICLE 2 of the Constitution. The principal responsibility we are addressing with this thread is found in Article 2, Section 3:
@AP "...he (President) shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States."
@AP Care that "the laws be faithfully executed" means the President is responsible to see that the Acts of Congress are carried out as intended by the Congress.
@AP The President is the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States Government. That is the the meaning of the quote from Article 2, Section3.
@AP In order for one person to enforce the laws enacted by the Congress, the Constitution made it clear that the President would need to have "executive departments" to help in ensuring the laws are "faithfully executed."
@AP "...he (President) may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices..." Article 2, Section 3
@AP The new Constitutional government was going to create Executive Departments to assist the President in carrying out all Constitutional duties, including enforcing the laws. In the case of enforcing the law, the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE was created by Act of Congress
@AP The creation of the Justice Department, and other Cabinet level departments, is an example of AGENCY LAW. The Department of Justice is the AGENT OF THE PRESIDENT in enforcing the laws passed by Congress.
@AP The Attorney General answers to the President. The President nominates a candidate for Attorney General. The Senate has to confirm that nomination, but once confirmed, the Attorney General is the agent of the President, but under the oversight of Congress.
@AP Whenever there is a question of criminal behavior on behalf of any officers of the Executive Branch, or the President, the Department of Justice automatically has a conflict of interest in pursuing such an investigation and potential prosecution as it is part of the Executive...
@AP ...Branch that it is investigating. When the violator is the President, the person under investigation is everyone's ultimate boss in the Executive Branch. Everyone in the government has known this for some time.
@AP There have been attempts to provide a mechanism for independent investigations and prosecutions of violators inside the Executive Branch, especially the President. In short, the Department of Justice never had anything near what the AP's claimed "historical independence."
@AP During the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, there were several corruption scandals. To investigate them, the equivalent of Special Counsels were established. The corruption was systemic, so addressing it during the Grant Administration was an exercise in whack-a-mole.
@AP In more recent times, Watergate spawned a Special Counsel's office, but when the investigation started closing in on the Oval Office for running the cover-up conspiracy, the Special Counsel was fired during the Saturday Night Massacre.
@AP Another Special Counsel was hired and the plot unraveled with the Supreme Court decision in US v. Nixon which caused the "Smoking Gun Tape" to be released.
@AP As a result of Watergate, Congress studied the problem of Department of Justice control of Special Counsels. The result was the formation of the INDEPENDENT COUNSEL through the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.
@AP This was a novel approach to addressing Executive Branch wrongdoing and ability to cover-up through control of the Justice Department. Allegations of wrongdoing in the Executive Branch...
@AP ...would cause the creation of an Independent Counsel who would be supervised by a Three Judge Panel, taking the politics of parties out of the investigation, or so the law suggested would happen.
@AP Independent Counsels investigated a second Republican President's scandal, IRAN-CONTRA, to the howls of the GOP. The investigation bled over from the Reagan Administration into the Bush Administration until the present Attorney General, William Barr...
@AP ...talked then President Bush into pardoning six targets of the Independent Counsel's investigation. . The investigation collapsed, but the GOP never dropped their hostility to the Ethics in Government Act.
@AP In contrast, the Democratic Party loved the law...until Bill Clinton assumed the office after the 1992 election.
@AP Clinton fell prey to an Independent Counsel when the GOP took control of Congress in the 1994 mid-term elections. The Whitewater investigation went on for years until Independent Counsel Ken Starr probed Clinton for lying under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
@AP After than, the Democrats had enough of the Ethics in Government Act. It was allowed to die in 1999.
@AP So, has the Department of Justice EVER been independent of the Executive Branch? Has the DOJ enjoyed "historical independence" from the President?
@AP No, it was never designed for that as the Law Enforcement Agent of the President, the Chief Law Enforcement Office of the United States, according to Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution.
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