Unindicted? Deuces Wild.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Andrew Napolitano describes a federal
assault on attorney-client privilege borne of domestic surveillance and some
convenient twisting of the "rules", either of which is bad enough on its own:
Can the NSA lawfully tell lawyers for the government who are negotiating with Mayer Brown lawyers what it overheard between the Mayer Brown lawyers and their client? The answer, incredibly, is: Yes. Federal rules prohibit the NSA from sharing knowledge with lawyers for the federal government only about persons who have been indicted. In this case, Mayer Brown is attempting to negotiate favorable trade relations between Indonesia and the U.S., and the lawyers for the U.S. have the unfair advantage of knowing in advance the needs, negotiating positions and strategy of their adversaries. In the Obama years, this is how the feds work: secretly, unfairly and in utter derogation of the attorney-client privilege. [bold added, link in original omited]With the government running practically everything these days, does Napolitano even need to ask, "What will they do next?"
-- CAV
2 comments:
Hi Gus,
I think that this kind of expansion of rules is what happens when Congress surrenders their law-making authority to the executive bureaucracies which is arguably a violation of the separation of powers.
And, given the reluctance of the GOP Administrations to indict the lawbreakers of previous administrations in the vain hope that they will reciprocate with such immunity, this kind of abuse will not stop.
The only solutions, which the GOP leadership have already demonstrated that they are loath to use, is to employ the power of the purse by zero-budgeting such agencies to quash such unconstitutional behavior - which it is even if some federal court says otherwise - and to have subsequent administrations prosecute the evil-doers that escape justice in previous presidencies due to political affiliation.
If there are no consequences to the bureaucrats involved in individual right's violations, there will be no end to them.
c. andrew
Agreed, and I think George Will made a somewhat similar point regarding congressional irresponsibility and bureaucratic empowerment.
Should the needed hammer ever come down, it needs to come down on offenders from each party.
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