New York Magazine, for one, is outraged that the Trump administration’s AG Jeff Sessions would purge 46 U.S. attorneys, calling it an “abrupt bureaucratic massacre.”
It seems the liberal media has forgotten that in March 1993 Janet Reno, President Bill Clinton’s AG, fired more than twice (93) as many U.S. attorneys. Or that after President Obama’s AG Eric Holder explained that “elections matter.” E.H. continued, “It is our intention to have the U.S. attorneys that are selected by President Obama in place as quickly as [we] can.”
Presidents have their own enforcement priorities, according to Andrew C. McCarthy in NRO. Furthermore, Mr. McCarthy notes, sitting presidents have “every right — subject to the Senate’s advice and consent — to have their own U.S. attorneys executing those priorities.”
U.S. attorneys are the instruments through which the president exercises his policy discretion. That is why they are political appointees. They do not have power of their own. Under our Constitution, all executive power is reposed in the president alone. Every officer of the executive branch is thus a delegate. The U.S. attorney exercises the president’s power and can be removed at the president’s will.
It is only natural, then, that a president will want his power wielded by his own appointees, whom he trusts to carry out his policy program. And it thus follows that, when there is a transition between administrations that see the world, and the Justice Department’s role in it, as differently as the Obama and Trump administrations, there will be sweeping turnover, carried out rapidly.
As well it should.
Read more here.
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