Senator Sheldon Whitehouse in our House for Constitution Day

Faculty, staff, and the RWU community turned out to hear an insider’s take on the congressional hearings on improper influence by the White House on Department of Justice decision-making that led to the resignation of embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse played a leadership role in these investigations in his first months on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he discussed the ways in which the Bush administration sought to interject political considerations into DOJ processes. 

The Senator was joined by David Zlotnick and Jared Goldstein, two RWU faculty who had front line DOJ experience before coming to Rhode Island, David as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia and Jared in the Office of the Solicitor General and in the Environmental and Natural Resources Division.

The panelists agreed that politics has a necessary and proper role in the appointment of United States Attorneys but felt that removal from office should not be allowed for failure to undertake partisan poisitions at the behest of the White House.  They also discussed the line between appropriate policy directives from the White House (Jared gave the example of DOJ changing position in a case he was handling that continued over from the Clinton to George W. Bush administration) and allowing regulated industries to dictate departmental priorities.

Click here for the coverage by the Providence Journal.