Proffered Deal Delays AG Confirmation

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) is on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee, at the behest of Republicans, has kept putting off a vote on the confirmation of Obama Attorney General nominee Eric Holder. Whitehouse has now lost patience with the holdup and has released a statement revealing, to his understanding, what is behind this. He feels the Republicans are quite afraid Holder may wind up prosecuting people for breaking U.S. and international law by torturing people, and they do not want any investigations into such activities to take place.

On January 23 Whitehouse released the following statement. You can see the original on his website here.

"Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have asked Eric Holder to make a commitment, before he is even confirmed, that he will not prosecute any Bush Administration officials for their involvement in acts of torture during the last administration.

Anyone familiar with the criminal justice system - especially those with experience as prosecutors or judges - should know that a prosecutor should make no determination about who to prosecute before he or she has all the facts, and particularly in response to legislative pressure.

After all we have recently been through at the Department of Justice, I would hope and expect that upon calm reflection, no one on our Committee would expect the Attorney General of the United States to make prosecutorial decisions based on legislative pressure."

Or make deals promising that certain criminals will have nothing to fear as long as he is on the job. Hopefully, Mr. Holder will have the integrity to refuse to make any such deal. Some of the members of this committee seem not only to have missed the memo that they lost the election, they also seem to remain clueless as to some of the reasons why they lost.