In a co-authored op-ed for Law360, Fordham Law Professor Bruce Green, director of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics, explains why the firing of special counsel Jack Smith’s team “is in fact a true threat to the rule of law.”
Acting Attorney General James McHenry recently fired the prosecutors who worked with special counsel Jack Smith on the federal criminal cases against President Donald Trump. McHenry reportedly told them in an emailed memo,
As President Trump declared on his first day back in office, “[t]he American people have witnessed the previous administration engage in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents, weaponizing the legal force of numerous Federal law enforcement agencies … against those perceived political opponents in the form of investigations, prosecutions, civil enforcement actions, and other related actions.” Nowhere was that effort more salient than in the unprecedented prosecutions the Department of Justice vigorously pursued against President Trump himself. … Given your significant role in prosecuting the president, I do not believe that the leadership of the department can trust you to assist in implementing the president’s agenda faithfully.
McHenry’s assertion that the discharged prosecutors cannot be trusted to help implement the president’s agenda rests on a fundamental mischaracterization of the legal profession and its norms.
Read “Firing Of Jack Smith’s Team Is A Threat To Rule Of Law” on Law360.