GateHouse Media
February 21, 2020
Last week, prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office
for the Southern District of New York submitted a sentence memorandum in the
case of longtime President Donald Trump associate Roger Stone. The
recommendation, based on the federal sentencing guidelines, proposed a sentence
of between seven and nine years in prison.
Within hours of the recommendation, President Trump
took to Twitter suggesting, in no uncertain terms, that the Department of
Justice, ”(C)annot allow this miscarriage of justice!”
Although, Attorney General William Barr denied the
president asked him to do anything, the Department of Justice swiftly
intervened. All four career prosecutors handling the case withdrew and one
resigned. New prosecutors submitted a second, more lenient, recommendation.
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson
sentenced Stone to three years and four months in federal prison.
Barr’s capitulation to Trump’s, not so veiled,
demand has spurred talk of the demise of the rule of law.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi accused the
Attorney General of having “deeply damaged the rule of law.” Professor Joyce
White Vance wrote in Time, “If Barr truly believes in the rule of law, this is
his moment.”
The Atlantic suggested, “Indeed, given our national
faith and trust in a rule of law no one can subvert, it is not too strong to
say that Bill Barr is un-American.” In fact, none other than William Barr
himself said in 2019, “Nothing could be more destructive of our system of
government, of the rule of law, or Department of Justice as an institution,
than any toleration of political interference with the enforcement of the law.”
Although the term “rule of law” has been tossed
around a lot lately, especially in these turbulent political times, what
exactly is the rule of law that has so many, so concerned?
The rule of law is defined as: The restriction of
the arbitrary exercise of power by subordinating it to well-defined and
established laws.
At its core, the rule of law means that the law
applies to everyone equally - no one is above the law. The rule of law is
embodied in the maxim “a government of law, not of men,” a phrase President
John Adams included in the Massachusetts state constitution 240 years ago.
Some will argue President Trump has every right to
intervene with the Department of Justice. The attorney general is appointed by
the president and serves at the pleasure of the president. The Department of
Justice is an executive branch office. In response to Barr saying the president
asked for nothing, Trump tweeted, “This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as
President, the legal right to do so.”
There is a difference between being able to do
something, and it being the right thing to do. One principle of the rule of law
is the equal enforcement of laws.
If the President of the United States calls for, and
gets, favorable treatment for his friend Roger Stone; while demanding a foreign
country investigate his political rival Joe Biden; or continually call for his
former political opponent Hillary Clinton to be “locked-up” - the trust and
confidence in our system of laws begins to erode.
That is why nearly 2,500 former federal prosecutors
and Justice Department officials, from across the political spectrum, have
called on the attorney general to step down. In an open letter that began
circulating after Barr intervened in the Stone case, the signatories adopted
the following language, “Each of us strongly condemns President Trump’s and
Attorney General Barr’s interference in the fair administration of justice.”
It is easy in politics to overstate the urgency of a
given situation. This is not one of those situations. There is more at stake
than meets the eye. CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin warns in The New Yorker of
“creeping authoritarianism.”
We are living at a time where it appears that the
president doesn’t merely want to flex his muscles, he wants to destroy American
institutions, by breeding distrust, creating doubt and eroding confidence in
one of our most cherished values - the rule of law.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.
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