Sally Yates needs to be heard more often on Trump’s unfitness
By Jennifer Rubin October 17 at 10:00 AM
Former acting attorney general Sally Yates, who first alerted the White House to ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn’s lies and who was fired for refusing to defend the first travel ban (which was subsequently struck down, and then dropped by the administration) gave a recent interview. Her remarks should be taken to heart:
It is a long-standing tradition—and an essential one to the rule of law—that the Department of Justice operates independently . . . . At the risk of sounding preachy, the DOJ has to be able to make its decisions about investigations and prosecutions free of any political influence whatsoever. In Democratic and Republican administrations alike, that has been a time-honored norm, a time-honored tradition that the White House has absolutely no involvement in that.
She then explained what this meant in practice:
That means that, from my perspective, the president shouldn’t be trying to shame the attorney general for recusing from the investigation that it was frankly a no-brainer, I think, to recuse from. That [the president] shouldn’t be trying to goad [the attorney general] into re-initiating an investigation of a political rival or calling him up and trying to get him to drop a criminal prosecution of Sheriff [Joe] Arpaio.
We are confident she would agree that this also means the president shouldn’t be hectoring the special counsel, shouldn’t be falsely hinting at the existence of White House tapes or threatening to bring spurious charges against the former FBI director, shouldn’t be drafting a defense for his son to give a false explanation for his attendance at a meeting with Russian officials and shouldn’t be blaming immigrants for increased crime in some cities. Nor do I think she would find it acceptable for the president to dub the media’s right to publish what it wants “disgusting.” She’d, I am sure, agree that falsely claiming millions of people illegally voted undermines our entire electoral system.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/10/17/sally-yates-needs-to-be-heard-more-often-on-trumps-unfitness/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.fd90f97a73d1
DO SOMETHING!
| 