Shame on Holder for politicizing secret memos


He knows better

Eric Holder, President Obama’s Attorney General, has shamelessly adopted the tactics of the disgraced prosecutors of Senator Stevens.

Holder has now released 11 formerly classified legal memoranda. These cherry picked legal opinions have been seized upon by left-wing extremists to call for prosecutions of those involved in interrogations of terrorists such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.” The terrorist has also admitted involvement in some 30 other terror plots.

The left’s call for the political retribution of show trials over a disagreement over War On Terror policy was given a green light this week by President Obama.

Like the Stevens’ prosecutors, Holder didn’t bother releasing documents that could be used to defend the War on Terror policies the left, Holder and Obama now find so abhorrent. Former vice president Cheney called for the Obama Administration to release the exculpatory files as well.

Holder, to his great discredit, claims he isn’t aware of memos Cheney says should now be released. Watch the following exchange between Holder and Congressman Frank Wolf:

As Wolf said, Holder has an “obligation to release the rest of the memos.” Holder’s obfuscation that he is “not familiar with those memos,” that he has “not seen them,” and that he doesn’t “know
that they exist,” simply does not cut it.

Holder, having released the documents he and the left find so damning, must find and release the documents which Cheney says will detail the valuable intelligence gained from the use of the now objectionable policies. Holder’s failure to do so would be no different than what was done by the prosecutors, or is that persecutors, of Senator Stevens.


Breaking: Criminal investigation opened against Stevens’ prosecution team.


(Via AoSHQ) I suspect that Attorney General Holder isn’t going to be very thrilled about this:

Stevens case closed, case against prosecutors open

WASHINGTON — A federal judge dismissed the corruption conviction of former Sen. Ted Stevens on Tuesday and took the rare and serious step of opening a criminal investigation into prosecutors who mishandled the case.

“In nearly 25 years on the bench, I’ve never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I’ve seen in this case,” U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said.

Sullivan appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Justice Department lawyers who repeatedly mishandled witnesses and withheld evidence from defense attorneys during the monthlong trial that ended with Stevens’ conviction in October.

The article goes on note that the special prosecutor has been put into place specifically because the judge does not have confidence in the Justice Department’s ability to conduct an internal review of its past conduct. Whatever your opinion of former Senator Stevens and the original trial, that’s a pretty definite negative statement about the DoJ’s professional ethics.

More as we get it: in the meantime, here’s a previous NRO article (also via AoSHQ) that’s somewhat critical of Sullivan’s preliminary decisions yesterday.


Fratricide And Ted Stevens


Yesterday (and I swear I had no idea what was coming down the pike the next day), I responded to a comment by one of Redstate’s more clever mobies (he is clever because he avoids the blam stick by carefully limiting himself to one comment per month or so). Yil, of course, was trying to plant the meme that former US Attorney Chris Christie, the man increasingly looking like a very very serious threat to Jon Corzine’s plans for re-election as New Jersey Governor, was engaged in partisan politics when his office began an investigation of Bob Menendez just before the 2006 elections.

I responded thus;

Yep … Christie wasn’t as smart as those Democrat DOJ staffers that went after Stevens.

Those guys not only prosecuted Stevens in DC, where a Republican is about as likely to escape conviction as a snowball escaping hell in solid form, they leaked slanted info to the AK Press, they also hid exculpatory evidence at trial, and managed to win a conviction right on time for November.

Those guys were pros.

That was yesterday.

Today, totally coincidentally, the papers are saying this;

The Justice Department has moved to dismiss former Sen. Ted Stevens’ indictment, effectively voiding his Oct. 27 conviction on seven counts of filing false statements on his U.S. Senate financial disclosure forms.

“After careful review, I have concluded that certain information should have been provided to the defense for use at trial,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement released this morning. “In light of this conclusion, and in consideration of the totality of the circumstances of this particular case, I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial.”

The Justice Department filed its motion to dismiss the case this morning.

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