UPDATED: On Career Prosecutors
Yesterday commenter Cassander recounted his personal experiences in law school , basically at the same time I was in law school--the mid seventies, for those of you who can remember those heady post-Watergate days. The comment is too long to reproduce in its entirety, but Cassander recounts the views a famous Constitutional Law professor sought to inculcate (I think that's the right word) in his students:
And so he exhorted us credulous students …don’t mind that stupid legislature…The U.S. Congress…elected by small-minded farmers, union members, rednecks, businessmen, and little people…disproportionately empowered by the federal system. In effect, never mind what the Framers’ wrote…Our legislative process…the rightness of our civilization… is paralyzed by democracy…but don’t fear! You…the elite, the up and coming elite…the best of the best…you lawyers…you Columbia lawyers…can make needed change which otherwise would not occur using the power of your intelligence.
He went on: You can use the court system and sympathetic judges and a malleable Constitution to achieve what we cannot achieve in the legislature. I’m sure a large number of my classmates sitting in the room thirstily drank the kool-aid he was serving. How empowering! Certainly Ruth Bader Ginsburg (on the faculty at the time) did. In all likelihood my classmate Eric Holder was in the room. In all likelihood my classmate Scooter Libby was in the room.
Wechsler told us in no uncertain terms that the smart people (as measured, I guess by grades and board scores sufficiently high to be admitted to Columbia Law School and its peer schools) should rule the country because we know better. It seemed all innocent and idealistic then.
I responded:
Another part of making the necessary changes is removing the people who disagree with the really smart people from positions of influence. That's where creative prosecutors come into play. In league with compliant LE.
Those of you who have read Lee Smith's The Plot Against the President will be aware that in Chapter 15, Dirty Cops, Smith was kind enough to quote my views at some length, especially regarding the process by which the FBI over the past few decades was to a significant degree co-opted by leftist political activists--not in all its daily activities, but in politically sensitive cases. This co-optation was accomplished by greatly expanding the role of just those types of lawyers that Cassander describes in their student days. We see the results in the Lisa Pages, Comeys, Bakers, Trisha Andersons, and all the rest we're now familiar with from the Russia Hoax.
Today at PJ Media J. Christian Adams has an informative article along similar lines, on how our two tier "justice" or "just for us" system works, especially in DC. To give you some idea on where Adams is coming from, how he knows what he's talking about, this is his brief bio:
J. Christian Adams is an election lawyer who served in the Voting Rights Section at the U.S. Department of Justice. His New York Times bestselling book is Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department (Regnery). His website is www.electionlawcenter.com . Follow him on Twitter @electionlawctr.
And here are some excerpts to give you a taste for the rest of the article:
Let's examine those Justice Department “career lawyers.”
It is now plain that “career lawyer” isn’t a euphemism for unbiased and impartial. It’s exactly the opposite. It usually means Democrat, leftist, elitist, culturally hostile to middle America and feverishly anti-Trump.
When I was at the Department of Justice, it was no different. I wrote a whole wild book about the prevailing madness, years before the country got a taste of Andrew Weissmann’s partisan biases.
Justice Department “career lawyers” are highly skilled at finding reasons to kill cases against cabinet officials who disclose top-secret information, put State Department emails on private servers, or who lie on FISA warrant applications. The lessons learned in Ivy League law schools are put to good use in developing plausible excuses to avoid any grand jury presentations — at least plausible excuses to the Washington Post and now bankrupt McClatchy.
After all, did any of the "career lawyers" bring the Holder criminal contempt findings to a grand jury? ...
...
But when the target is Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, or dozens of Trump campaign officials who were served with grand jury subpoenas, by golly have the “career lawyers” got an argument in favor of action.
...
It was the sweetheart deal for the Awan brothers, ...
It was the manipulated outcome in another national security matter involving Democrat senate intelligence staffer James Wolfe, ...
It was the non-prosecution of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for lying to investigators about his media leaks.
It was the collusion with Mueller’s special prosecutors in allowing them to punt the Ukraine-related prosecution of Obama lawyer Greg Craig to Liu’s shop. ...
It was failing to aggressively prosecute the radical #resist leftists who sought to disrupt the inauguration, even though James O’Keefe successfully recorded them plotting the violence.
And most notably, it was a 9-year sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone by four “career lawyers” in Liu’s office.
...
The “career lawyers” at the Justice Department did not stand for election and win. The entire Department should take note. There is a unitary executive. Elections matter. The president ran against the elites who are dispensing biased, sanctimonious unequal justice in Washington, D.C.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that he is keeping his promises.
This is the world that Trump and Barr are up against. It's not easy, draining this swamp. The swamp dwellers know the rules and are extremely adept--not to say shameless and unscrupulous--to bending those rules to their own ideological advantage. It's not easy reversing their actions, because they don't often slip up in ways that can be readily reversed.
UPDATE: This should give you some idea of the magnitude of the Resistance to Barr at DoJ. These are "former" officials, but you can imagine that they were replaced with mostly left people. Barr can't fire career civil servants without cause--serious cause. And even with cause, it's time extremely time consuming and labor intensive. Nor, with so many problem careerists, can they simply be reassigned--there aren't enough open spots for that.
Will Chamberlain 
@willchamberlain
This is the clearest indication yet that Barr is doing an outstanding job
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The Washington Post
@washingtonpost
More than 1,100 ex-Justice Department officials call for Barr’s resignation https://wapo.st/39Fj7b2
So, at the same time that Barr needs to understand Trump's political imperatives, Trump needs to take into account the difficulties Barr faces. I can't gauge the progress of the Durham investigation in terms of possible prosectutions. Certainly Durham has been and continues to be very busy.