Opening Statement of
Ranking Member Chris Cannon at Joint Hearing on “Selective Prosecution”
Thursday, October 23rd, 10 a.m., 2141 RHOB
I would like to welcome our witnesses.
To my colleagues on the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee and the Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Committee, let me say that I, at least in one way, am glad that we have a chance to sit together. It is not often these two subcommittees have the opportunity to hold a joint hearing.
As a preliminary matter, I would like to associate myself to the remarks of the distinguished Ranking Member of the Crime Subcommittee.
I have just a few remarks to add myself.
We have just marked the 6th Anniversary of September 11th, 2001. Since that tragic day, we have witnessed the bombings in Bali, the attack on the Madrid trains, the attack on the London subway, and the attempts on the Heathrow and Glasgow airports.
We have witnessed the foiling of terror plots, for example on in-bound planes from France, Germany, and elsewhere.
It is thanks to the heroic and incessant efforts of the Justice Department entities that we oversee, as well as other agencies and our military, that it is the list of attacks we have foiled, and terrorists we have destroyed that has grown longer, not the attacks on our soil.
But today we are not talking about our efforts and tools in the war on terror and the war on crime before the Crime Subcommittee, and we are not talking about issues of the prosperity and stability of our economy in the context of Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee.
Instead, we are once again talking about U.S. Attorney’s and selective prosecutions for political reasons. The Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee has spent an inordinate amount of time on this whole subject over the course of this year. What has come from the investigation is not much more then a sullied Department of Justice, and a partisan whirlwind for the majority to push on the press in the battle to a destabilize an agency.
This witch-hunt has never really found anything that justified the Committee’s extraordinary expenditure of time. But it has kept going. As one excursion after another has led nowhere, the majority has simply shifted the targets, changed the allegations, and cast its wrecking ball anew.
And so we find ourselves today, perhaps at last, at the logical conclusion of this irresponsible distortion of our oversight responsibilities.
We are summoned by the majority to hold a hearing of these two important subcommittees, to what end?
To turn the partisan lens on two pending criminal matters.
One is on appeal.
One has not even come to trial yet.
The Department, of course, can’t appear to defend itself.
The cases are pending.
And our witnesses, Mr. Thornburgh and Mr. Jones know that.
The Members of these two subcommittees know that.
As a result, we are hard pressed to come to the truth.
I contend we shouldn’t be here at all, and our premature inquiry promises nothing other than to undermine the criminal justice system, and perhaps even produce a miscarriage of justice in these two cases.
For every word that those who would attack the Department for these two prosecutions utter can be broadcast, reported in print, or reported on the Web, in the districts in which the trials will occur.
This hearing will risk tainting the jury pools in those districts.
This is an unfortunate use of Committee time and resources, and I do not intend to prolong it any further but I hope this is the last dead end this Committee will take on the ever evolving issue of Department of Justice prosecutions.
I yield back the remainder of my time.
