U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division Chief, Lanny Breuer, to Step Down — after PBS’s Frontline Implicitly Exposes Him, Attorney General Eric Holder, and President Obama for Being Plutocracy Friendly

© 2013 Peter Free

 

28 January 2013

 

 

Citation — to the Frontline piece

 

Frontline, The Untouchables, PBS.org (22 January 2013) (53:36 minute video)

 

 

Citation — to news report of Breuer’s coming resignation

 

Danielle Douglas, Lanny Breuer, Justice Department criminal division chief, is stepping down, Washington Post (23 January 2013)

 

 

If you want to see a smarmy excuse-maker in action, watch Lanny Breuer in Frontline’s documentary

 

Speaking as a former cop, corporate lawyer, and state assistant attorney general — Breuer’s repeated excuses about why the Department of Justice did not prosecute high ranking financial sector criminals after the 2008 economic crash is professionally indefensible.

 

Frontline did an excellent job of establishing more than adequate levels of evidence for initiating the criminal prosecution of Wall Street executives.

 

What struck me in Frontline’s interview with Breuer, was the fact that he had obviously been chosen for his spot because he is apparently not, at inner core, a born 100 percent prosecutorial type.  Neither, apparently, is Attorney General Eric Holder, his boss.

 

Both men are evidently better at coming up with reasons not to prosecute powerful figures, than they are at exhibiting the innate, rank-insensitive ferocity that motivates born “get ‘em” types like New York’s former Attorney General (later Governor) Eliot Spitzer.

 

Coincidentally, 60 Minutes aired a segment with another born prosecutorial type, United States Anti-Doping Agency chief executive officer, Travis Tygart.  Tygart went after cycling doping kingpin and witness intimidator, Lance Armstrong, after the Department of Justice dropped a solid case against him (apparently both for doping and witness intimidation) without explanation.  Tygart’s determined leadership made the case against the wealthy, politically connected Armstrong stick.

 

Watch Mr. Tygart’s demeanor in talking with Scott Pelley and you’ll understand what a determined and honorable prosecutor looks like:

 

60 Minutes, Is Lance Armstrong still lying?, CBS News (27 January 2013) (17:34 minute video)

 

 

The bigger picture — President Obama’s culpability

 

After an economic crash that stole billions of dollars in wealth from America’s 99 Percent, a President with genuine democracy supporting integrity would have:

 

(a) gone out of his or her way to punish the criminality that led to it

 

and

 

(b) championed a better regulatory system to control it.

 

The Obama Administration substantively did neither.

 

Eric Holder’s pusillanimous behavior vis a vis Wall Street, drone murder, institutionalized torture, and the erosion of American civil liberties is a direct result of President Obama’s chosen policies.

 

And Lanny Breuer’s non-performance of his job relative to Wall Street executives had to have been at Attorney General Holder’s direction.  Instead of doing the prosecutorially right thing, the Department of Justice elected to go after Libertarian activists like Aaron Swartz.

 

President Obama’s Department of Justice evidently considers American freedom to be a bad thing and the Oligarchy of Wealth to be a good one.

 

 

“Liberal” journalist David Sirota joins (more conservative) me in seeing through the President’s cynical hypocrisy

 

Mr. Sirota writes:

 

Four years into his presidency, Barack Obama’s political formula should be obvious. He gives fabulous speeches teeming with popular liberal ideas, often refuses to take the actions necessary to realize those ideas and then banks on most voters, activists, reporters and pundits never bothering to notice – or care about – his sleight of hand.

 

Whether railing on financial crime and then refusing to prosecute Wall Street executives or berating health insurance companies and then passing a health care bill bailing out those same companies, Obama embodies a cynical ploy – one that relies on a celebrity-entranced electorate focusing more on TV-packaged rhetoric than on legislative reality.

 

© 2013 David Sirota, Actually, Obama does support “perpetual war”, Salon (25 January 2013)

 

 

The moral? — One has to look beyond words to actions to comprehend the Obama Administration’s Plutocracy supporting emphasis

 

President Obama will undoubtedly be a historically important figure.  But a great leader he is not.

 

At most, his election proves that a minority person can be elected to exhibit the identical evils that his white Plutocracy establishing predecessors did.  His election successes indicate only that We the People appear to favor people oppressing wealth holders, no matter their color.

 

I had hoped for more from a man who (arguably) was preeminently in a position to understand and react against the perils that the American oligarchy poses egalitarian freedoms.  Instead, we got the Magnificent Manipulator.

 

Given America’s cultural emphasis on substance lacking Illusion, perhaps that was to be expected.  Whatever else can be said about the President, he is a genius at misleading voters.