Lou Dobbs mocked thousands of former Justice Department officials for signing a letter calling for Attorney General William Barr’s resignation over the botched sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, claiming that the idea the department should be independent from the president is “idiotic.”
On Monday’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” the Fox Business host built upon an argument he pushed last week that the idea of Department of Justice independence from the White House is “crap.” Dobbs expanded Monday, reasoning that Trump should have influence on the department because one of its many divisions oversees national security.
“How can anyone say the Justice Department is independent of the administration when it contains, for example, a national security division?” he posited.
“Just who the hell would they report to? Nobody could say national security is anything less than what is in the clear purview of the president of the United States, the commander in chief. His authorities, his responsibilities include oversight of national security, including Justice and its 110,000 employees.”
Dobbs also blasted the 2,000-plus former Justice Department officials calling for Barr’s resignation in a letter published Sunday.
“Where do they get this idiotic idea that the Constitution should be ignored and that the Justice Department is independent of the executive and independent of the president?” Dobbs asked his guest, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
The letter’s signatories, many of whom have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations, strongly condemned Trump’s and Barr’s interference in the administration of justice.
The letter underscored the importance of law enforcement’s independence from politics, saying, “Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.”
Since the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, every presidency has put regulations in place to preserve the integrity of Justice Department investigations by ensuring they’re prevented from political influence by the White House.
Last week, four career prosecutors withdrew from the Roger Stone case after top Justice Department officials overruled their sentencing recommendation that Stone should get seven to nine years in prison for witness tampering and lying to Congress. Trump later thanked Barr for taking charge of the case, which appeared to confirm concerns that the attorney general had intervened at his behest. Trump had publicly blasted the initial recommended sentence against his friend as unfair.