Bob Barr: “I was mystified yesterday, though, to see a new defense to criminal prosecution raised by none other than the Attorney…”

“I was mystified yesterday, though, to see a new defense to criminal prosecution raised by none other than the Attorney General of the United States. In her letter in which she refuses to appoint an independent counsel to investigate allegations of wrongdoing for which there may be a conflict of interest or an insufficient basis, she says that the Vice President's admitted use of a telephone in the White House and the OEOB to solicit funds was not a crime because the use of the phone for something that is otherwise permissible is OK. I can see the next time the U.S. attorney has to exercise prosecutorial discretion involving the use of a phone by a drug trafficker, and I suppose now that the Department of Justice will have to decline such prosecutions because the use of the phone is otherwise permissible, and therefore even if it is used to solicit drug monies, that is OK because use of the phone is for otherwise legal purposes. It is a sad day indeed.”