Posted on 11/19/2009 1:44:22 PM PST by Conservative Vermont Vet
Attorney General Eric Holder lacks authority to make a decision on moving terror detainees to civilian courts for trial, one of his predecessors said Wednesday.
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who held his position during the Bush administration from 2001-2005, said that Holder lacked the legal standing to decide to move alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other terror detainees to federal courts in New York City to stand trial. >p>
"The attorney general doesn't have the authority to mandate that the secretary of Defense turn somebody over to him and yield jurisdiction so that something that would have been done in a military setting is done in a civilian setting," Ashcroft told the Christ Stigall show on KCMO radio this morning.
"I believe that this is a decision that comes as a result of the president making the decision, or if not making the decision, allowing an attorney general to do what he normally doesn't have the authority to do, and could only do at the acquiescence of the president," the former AG and former Missouri senator argued.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
If bummer and friends are smart they will bring this to the forefront in order to wiggle off the very sharp and poisonous hook they have impaled themselves on. Then they can tell their extreme tard supporters they tried. If ... they're smart ...
Fine with me as long as the ACLU doesn't get to go fishing through our intel agencies with the discovery process.
I swore I read the word guaranteed.
All’s I see are Obama/Holder, PREDICT and PROFESSED a conviction
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/18/holder-dont-fear-trial-of_n_361846.html
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/nov/18/obama-professed-911-mastermind-will-be-convicted/
Bingo
The words, ‘will be convicted’ can’t be clintonspeaked.
On the other speculation that he was brought on to erase Obama’s ACORN ties.
Magician or lawyer?
A decision that Obama may come to regret
http://www.smh.com.au/world/a-decision-that-obama-may-come-to-regret-20091120-iquy.html
* Unsuccessfully lobbied the Justice Department last fall to pursue a criminal probe of the American Issues Project (AIP), an independent group that sought to run an ad highlighting the Barack Obama and terrorist Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground connection.
* Sought prosecution with the Department of Justice against Harold Simmons for funding the ad.
* Used thug and scare tactics on television stations throughout the U.S. to compel them to pull the advertisement of Obama and Ayers.
More info on him here, especially in post #12. However, on ACORN, he's probably going to have to be a magician to make those ties disappear. My bet is he'll more or less just try to bankrupt or discredit anyone who brings up the connections.
Nothing like criminal thugs running our country. And too think what Nixon was forced to resign for... looks like kindergarten compared to these Obama radical mob thugs.
Why doesn’t the military take issue with this?
I guess if this issue came into a courtroom, the questions and answers would come down to whether or not the dear one’s delegation of authority was explicit (an executive order) or implicit, as in:
Question to Holder: Did the President authorize you, verbally or otherwise, to take jurisdiction in the trials of prisoners held at the military prison at Guantanamo.
Holder: Yes.
Question to BHO: Did you, verbally or otherwise, authorize the Attorney General to take jurisdiction in the trials of prisoners held at the military prison at Guantanamo.
BHO: Yes.
If that is all it would take, to validate the “authority” question, then is Ashcroft’s complaint real or a matter of semantics?
Just asking; I’m not a lawyer.
There are these quotes:
WASHINGTON — For a moment, he became judge, jury and executioner.
President Obama yesterday blurted out a predicted conviction and death sentence for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed — then sheepishly qualified the prejudgment.
In one of several TV interviews at the end of his Asia trip, Obama said those offended by the legal privileges offered to Mohammed in a civilian rather than military trial won’t find it “offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.”
And then he quickly backtracked, saying he didn’t mean to suggest he was prejudging the self-confessed mass murderer.
“I’m not going to be in that courtroom,” Obama said. “That’s the job of the prosecutors, the judge and the jury.”
In interviews broadcast on NBC and CNN, the president also said experienced prosecutors who specialize in terrorism have offered assurances that “we’ll convict this person with the evidence they’ve got, going through our system.”
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/bam_big_drAQ4TlTFziefTaNw8M5qN
He is not stupid enough to say that publically and not know exactly what he was doing. It is lawyer 101.
I thought I had seen a quote like that also, but I did notice many headlines using the word “guarantee.”
Administration Guarantee of Conviction in Terror Case May Undermine Federal Trial
This is an important question, in the article you posted a link to.
"Sen. John Cornyn, R- Texas, who has sent a letter to the Justice Department and Homeland Security about the terror case, also challenged Holder about what to do if a jury acquits."
The BHO/Holder Plan “guaranteed” to be a disaster.
I’ve been following Andrew McCarthy on this (prosecuted blind sheikh) & also saw Holder hearing. His discussion of his “protocol” reminded me of Gore’s lockbox.
This is McCarthy’s latest:
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
As Usual, Holder Undone by Holder [Andy McCarthy]
As I noted in addressing Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony this morning, the heart of his defense of the administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 terrorists in civilian court is the howler that there is no real difference between a civilian trial and a military commission.
Holder absurdly claimed that he believed it would be easier to get a conviction in civilian court — notwithstanding that the more lax evidentiary standards in military commissions make it easier for the government to get its proof admitted. And that’s beside the fact that the jihadists wanted to plead guilty and proceed to execution in their military commission. (In Holder-world, conviction in an unpredictable civilian trial two years from now is somehow a surer thing than a military commission in which the defendants asked to plead guilty eleven months ago.)
Holder also claimed that there was no real difference between the protection of classified information in civilian and military courts. I explained in the aforementioned post why this isn’t true. But I neglected to mention the most obvious reason why it isn’t true: the Justice Department’s own “protocols” for sorting out which enemy combatants get military commissions and which get civilan trials with all the rights and privileges of American citizens.
During today’s testimony, Holder was especially incoherent in trying to explain the rationale — which has resulted in the worst war criminals getting a civilian trial while lesser war criminals are stuck in military tribunals. He kept falling back on DOJ’s newly developed “protocols” for making this judgment. Scott Johnson has an excellent post at Powerline discussing these protocols. There are only three and they are very elastic. But for now, I want to focus on the second one (my italics):
“B. Efficiency. The factors to be considered here are protection of intelligence sources and methods; the venue in which the case would be tried; issues related to multiple-defendant trials; foreign policy concerns; legal or evidentiary problems that might attend prosecution in the other jurisdiction: and efficiency and resource concerns.”
So here are a couple of questions the Judiciary Committee might want to ask Holder in its follow-up:
1. If, as between civilian trials and military commissions, there is no real difference in the degree to which national defense secrets are protected, why does the Justice Department apply a protocol which asserts that the “protection of intelligence sources and methods” will be different in the two systems?
2. If the evidentiary rules in the two systems are virtual mirror images, why does DOJ apply a protocol that says evidence that is admissible in one system may not be admissible in the other? And, since Holder claims the government has an easier time proving its case in civilian court, can he identify a single category of evidence that is admissible in civilian court but not in a military tribunal?
On number 2, here’s a hint: One of the major attacks on the military commissions, advanced by lawyers like those in Holder’s firm who volunteered their services to the enemy, was that military commissions permitted too much hearsay and, potentially, evidence obtained by “torture.” They argued that the government should be required to prove its case under what they insisted were the more demanding standards that govern civilian trials.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDAxMzNkYzAyNThkNTlkMGE5NTRhMjA4MWNmYzBjYmY=
Do I vote against the President on this stupid decision? Or, do I vote against the people of my District who recognize that this is a foolish decision.
Congressman Billybob
Jury pool already tainted by Holder and genius Barack Obama. I always wonder if BHO really passed the IL bar exam.
Can you even imagine voir dire (jury selection). What exactly would a jury of these slimes’ peers be? Other terrorists?
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