John Stossel‘s latest column at Human Events labels federal prosecutors as “federal persecutors” because of their ends-justify-the-means approach to their jobs.
A group of Washington overlords — federal prosecutors — sometimes break rules and wreck people’s lives.
President Obama may soon appoint one of them to be America’s next Attorney General.
The prosecutorial bullying is detailed in a new book by Sidney Powell, “Licensed to Lie.”
She reports that the Department of Justice’s narcissistic and dishonest prosecutors destroy people by doing things like deliberately withholding evidence.
Remember the Arthur Andersen accounting firm?
It was killed off by ambitious prosecutors who claimed the company helped Enron commit accounting fraud and then shredded the evidence.
But instead of charging people who allegedly ordered evidence destroyed, the DOJ indicted the entire company. That destroyed the accounting firm. Publicly traded companies cannot do business with companies under criminal investigation, so Andersen lost most of its clients.
The prosecutor’s purpose, says Powell, was to chill resistance from other companies that might dare fight the Feds. The message: cooperate, or we will destroy you! These pressure tactics were appropriate, said one prosecutor, because shredding documents “attacks the justice system itself by impeding investigators and regulators from getting at the truth.”
But who actually hid the truth?
The prosecutors, writes Powell. In fact, Andersen had saved most of its documents and gave them to the government. The prosecutors simply lied to the court about it.
Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Arthur Andersen’s conviction. But by then, 80,000 employees had lost their jobs — 80,000 people who’d done nothing wrong.
