I Barely Recognize the Justice Department I So Proudly Served

by Thomas Coffin

Note: This opinion piece was published in The Oregonian/OregonLive on October 13, 2019.

I spent much of my professional career as a trial attorney within the United States Department of Justice: 21 years as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of California and the District of Oregon. I worked closely with agents from every federal law enforcement branch, as well as state and local police. For a period of my service I was Chief of the Criminal Division in the very busy border area of Southern California and was responsible for overseeing all federal criminal investigations and prosecutions by my office. I was honored during my career with being appointed a Senior Litigation Counsel for the DOJ.

I can barely recognize the Department I so proudly served. It is losing its way and its mission under the present Administration and is in danger of abandoning its role as the guardian of our Nation’s Constitution and its Rule of Law.

The Department and its Attorney General do not exist to further the personal agenda of whomever happens to occupy the White House at the moment. Presidents come and go, but the Constitution and the Rule of Law must always remain as the foundation of our democracy.

It is no secret that the current occupant views the Constitution as an obstacle to the unrestrained powers he seeks. He has notoriously expressed those sentiments, criticizing the constitutional framework of co-equal branches of government, checks and balances on his power, freedom of the press, and even the existence of an independent judiciary (“Who needs judges?”) It is thus no surprise that the primary attribute he insists upon from those he appoints to office is personal loyalty to himself, not to the institutions or country they serve. We witnessed this trait clearly with his abrupt dismissals of FBI Director Comey and Attorney General Sessions for their lacking in that personal fealty.

In the aftermath of those actions, and with the appointment of William Barr as Attorney General, the Department is rapidly being transformed into the arm and apparatus of the president himself, who has publicly acknowledged that he finally has an Attorney General in place that will further his objectives.

Since taking office, Barr has mischaracterized the findings of the Mueller Report by claiming it concluded that the president had not engaged in any acts that constituted obstruction of justice in connection with the Russian investigation headed by Comey. The Report had not made such a conclusion, resulting in over 1000 former DOJ attorneys signing a statement that the Report details evidence which would indeed support an obstruction charge. More recently, the president offered to send Barr and Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, to the Ukraine to further the president’s request for a “favor” from the Ukraine president: to open a criminal investigation into a potential political rival in the 2020 elections.

For the president to offer the Attorney General of the United States to partner with his private attorney in an investigation of such nature is a shocking departure from protocol and calls into question the integrity and independence of the DOJ. When that private attorney projects the persona and demeanor of Giuliani, the questions are greatly intensified. What is quite clear is that the president sees no difference between the two and has obliterated the boundary lines between their roles.

An exclamation point to the president’s absorption of the DOJ as an apparatus to further his personal agenda is the insertion of the Department into litigation in New York involving a subpoena issued by state officials for copies of his personal tax returns. Joining the president’s personal attorneys in resisting the subpoena, the Department requested that a federal court block the subpoena pending resolution of constitutional issues including the president’s legal position that he is immune from criminal investigations while in office. A federal judge has soundly rejected the Department’s and the president’s arguments and the matter has been put on hold pending an appeal. Although the DOJ has not formally endorsed the argument that a president is immune from being investigated for crimes while in office, neither has it distanced itself from that position, which is the pivotal issue in the case. And one should recall that Rudy Giuliani, the peripatetic personal attorney for the president, famously opined that the president could have murdered James Comey in cold blood and be immune from prosecution. The reach can’t get any farther than that.

The Rule of Law is essential to democracy, as is the principle that the law applies equally to everyone, prince, pauper, or president. The Constitution is the Supreme Law of our Republic which, we must never forget, was established by “We the People”. No one is above the law under the compact which the people have established and pursuant to which we are governed. One needs to look no further than Russia, North Korea, or Saudi Arabia to understand what a country becomes when its leaders are above the law. That must never happen here, the birthplace of modern democracy. The Department of Justice must never forget the oath all of us took to defend the Constitution from all of its enemies, both foreign and domestic.