May 10, 2020
POLITICS VS THE PROFESSION:
An Ugly Day for the Justice Department (Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes , May 7, 2020, Lawfare)
Donald has always had one requirement of the lawyers he hires, that they behave like Roy Cohn and Michael Cohen. Barr and Shea will; the professionals won't.It is exceptionally rare for the U.S. Department of Justice to move in court to dismiss a case in which a defendant has--ably assisted by first-class lawyers--entered into a plea agreement to spare himself prosecution on more serious felony charges. It is rarer still for the government to do so without acknowledging that it violated any law or that the defendant's rights were somehow infringed. And it is still rarer yet for the government to take such a move without a single career prosecutor being willing to sign onto the brief seeking dismissal. [...]The government's 20-page brief is not an honest document--perhaps the reason that it is signed only by Timothy Shea, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia--and not a single one of the career prosecutors who worked on the case. That may also be the reason why Brandon Van Grack, the prosecutor who has worked the case from the beginning, moved to withdraw from the case entirely just hours before the Justice Department filed its motion.
Posted by Orrin Judd at May 10, 2020 3:11 PM