Editor’s Note: Elliot Williams (@elliotcwilliams) is a CNN legal analyst. A principal at The Raben Group, a national public affairs and strategic communications firm, he was formerly a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department and an assistant director at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the Obama administration. The views expressed here are the author’s. View more opinion on CNN.
I spent more time as a lawyer at the Department of Justice than in any other job in my career so far. That institution, my former colleagues and even the department’s cool neoclassical-meets-art-deco headquarters building will forever hold a large piece of my heart.
Years later, I still don’t know the political affiliations of many of the people I worked with. That’s because I, like so many others, worked there not out of a desire to score political points or pursue an agenda for one president or another, but to serve the public. (Indeed, the attorney general whose name is on the paperwork appointing me a trial attorney – John Ashcroft, a Missouri Republican who served in the post under George W. Bush – might well be the single modern public figure I align with least, politically speaking. Yet he led honorably and I am proud to have served under him.)
This week, I joined more than 2,000 former public servants in signing a letter criticizing Attorney General William Barr’s conduct in moving to drop charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn after Flynn’s guilty plea and admission that he lied to the FBI.
The decision to sign onto yet another statement was complicated for me. In general, I question the value of these statements; I wonder whether my being a Democrat (and former political appointee – for the Obama administration – at that) would be seen as undermining my criticism of the current leadership; and after the Mueller probe (remember that?) and impeachment (or that?) I think everyone in America has got a bad case of outrage fatigue.
Still, I signed on, because my reasons are bigger than whether Michael Flynn should be in jail.
Lost in the debate over whether it was legally proper to drop the case (a question that has been discussed extensively by others) is a subtle fact: Once again under this attorney general, a career prosecutor – seeing his work undermined and undone – chose to withdraw from a case. This is a bigger deal than you might think.
Earlier this year, after their work on sentencing longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone was tossed out by the department’s political leadership, three of the prosecutors on the case withdrew – and one resigned from the Justice Department altogether. Relatedly, a former senior career national security prosecutor recently made her views abundantly clear about the mendacity of her former bosses in mischaracterizing her statements about the Flynn case.
All of this is to say that it is nearly unheard of for career prosecutors to be so outspoken about how the department’s leadership has twisted their words or disrespected their work. Put another way, these were people who lived through some of the department’s ugliest periods ever – its condoning of torture; the firing of US attorneys who weren’t partisan enough; the sinister, mishandled prosecution of former Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska; and operation Fast and Furious. Yet after all that, what pushed them to their breaking point were actions by this President and this attorney general. That says a lot.
Out of respect for the career employees who took the extraordinary step of stepping down or out – and the many others who might feel the same way, but can’t – I felt it was important to add my voice.
In addition, let’s agree for a moment with two uncontroversial legal points: that the department is entitled to broad – even vast – discretion in how it decides whom to charge with crimes, and when; and that the law can be complex and reasonable minds can differ about it. Even still, why has the President consistently fared so well on high-profile decisions touched by the attorney general?
There were Flynn’s and Stone’s cases; Barr’s misrepresenting the findings of the Mueller report; his rejecting findings from the department’s nonpartisan inspector general about whether there was a basis for the Russia investigation in the first place; his ordering a criminal inquiry into the Russia probe’s origins; and his not opening a criminal investigation into a 2019 whistleblower complaint against Trump. And then there’s his consistently looking the other way when the President, say, tweets out kooky conspiracy theories, goes off on his own FBI director or attacks the federal judiciary.
This is all either a remarkable coincidence, or someone very important on the fifth floor of the Justice Department building is really committed to carrying the President’s water.
It doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Of course, the President selects the attorney general, and it’s perfectly reasonable for an attorney general to share the President’s broad philosophical priorities. But there comes a point at which an attorney general has crossed the line from philosophical alignment with the President to co-opting the department to his wishes. Sadly, that is where we are today.
Still, even if nothing changes about the attorney general’s conduct, the American people need to hear from him directly, at length. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the House Judiciary Committee was forced to postpone a March 31 hearing with Barr about politicization at the Justice Department. Now that Congress is gradually reopening, they should reschedule this hearing as soon as is practicable (as a former congressional staffer, the section of the statement calling for Barr’s testimony made me most enthusiastic about signing on).
If he wants to stonewall, let him. Even that will be a reminder of the mess the President has created for the Justice Department, and how desperately it needs new leadership.
I doubt that Barr read our statement and, in an epiphany, realized that the only way to save the institution – and his own broken reputation – is to resign. Still, there are more of us than there are of him, and we will keep speaking out when we can.
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But the problem is bigger than Barr. I continue to believe that the specter of President Trump is really what’s haunting the Justice Department. What we really need is a better President who has a shred of respect for either the rule of law, or the men and women who enforce it with dignity. A better attorney general will follow. The next one can’t be much worse.
If the department does yet another disgraceful thing in the future and I have to sign another statement, I will. I hope that after January, I will no longer have to.