What Good Is the Justice Department?

Last month, the Justice Department made headlines by seizing the phone records of AP reporters, drawing the ire from free speech advocates and news agencies world wide. The move in itself is concerning and the motive is yet to be seen. But the question to ask is, does the Justice Department have anything else to do? The Justice Department's raid on the AP brings into question all of their recent behavior, which is just as dubious. Most recently you will hear of their failed battle against the morning after pill, which as we can see was yet another fruitless endeavor and certainly does not help the case in proving their worth.

These recent actions require every citizen to ask, what good is the Justice Department? Shouldn't this entity be the one going toe-to-toe with criminal organizations, powerful trusts, industry insiders, and any other entity that is too powerful for the regional powers-at-be to handle? Well an even further study of their efforts will show you that the Justice Department seems to be only concerned about the little fish. Their most infamous headline in 2012 was their handling of the Aaron Swartz case, for instance.

Swartz, the internet phenom whose efforts help lay the groundwork for many websites such as Reddit, committed suicide over what many see as a heavy-handed approach by the Justice Department in prosecuting him. Swartz was charged with breaking into an internet cabinet and downloading millions of JSTOR articles. Despite the fact that JSTOR did not want to press charges and by the Justice Department's own admission that Swartz did not aim to financially gain from downloading the articles, they pressed forward with an absurdly lopsided prosecution which could have resulted in Swartz serving 35 years through using an outdated, cold-war era statute, CFAA.

More concerning was the fact that, this was not the first suicide on the hands of Stephen Heymann, the federal prosecutor. The question isn't what Swartz did was right or wrong, it is was the amount of emphasis our Federal Government put on the case necessary? There are countless heinous crimes happening in America every day, and they throw their weight behind prosecuting an internet activist, downloading academic articles just to make a statement? This was just a little fish and it is clear the Justice Department was making an example out of Swartz. What are some big fish, you ask?

Senator Elizabeth Warren has been quite open about her disdain of the banks since the 2008 fiscal collapse, questioning why drug dealers in America get hard time, yet bankers who break the law with impunity get nothing? Regardless of your opinion of the questionable legality of Wall Street's actions leading up to The Fiscal Collapse, our Justice Department did not even bother with an investigation. Furthermore, there is a case that exemplifies the Justice Department's inaction, one that is much more black and white: the HSBC money laundering case. HSBC broke the law, plain and simple. Yet, our government took the easy way out by just slapping them with a fine. Not to mention, HSBC was helping to bankroll the drug cartels, so it just goes to show that while using and selling drugs in America is against the law, apparently being a front for a drug cartel's operations to provide drugs, is perfectly fine.

To add insult to injury, Eric Holder, our stalwart Attorney General, bemoaned the fact that since HSBC's presence in our markets and economy is so large, that pressing criminal charges upon them might be bad for the economy. So here we have the Attorney General of the United States, afraid to take an enterprise guilty of criminal activity to court...for what might happen with the economy? Holder not only admitted that the Justice Department will not go after hard targets, but that any entity with enough financial presence is immune to our laws.

Essentially, we have an attorney general that is either too scared, apathetic, or just profoundly lazy to go after any big fish in America. Mind you, that goes against the very reason why the Justice Department was created. What happened to the Justice Department of old, going up against the likes of Standard Oil or Al Capone? Or how about not worrying about the economic implications of taking an industry giant like Microsoft to court in 1999 for anti-trust violations?  Even more recently we have the Justice Department settling with British Petroleum, in which BP did accept charges. So we can go after Standard Oil, Microsoft, and British Petroleum but not HSBC?

It seems like, perhaps the Justice Department is just too busy of late. With profoundly important cases such as the attempted forfeiture of Motel Caswell, who would have the time? In this case, the Justice Department argued that the sheer amount of crime that took place upon the motel's property was grounds to seize it. Well, a federal judge didn't buy that argument after the motel's lawyers proved that the respective level of crime occurs at many other hotels in the region. It was another fruitless endeavor, wasting our courts' valuable time and our tax dollars to boot, over a case that would have little implications over anything.

So we have recent cases of our Justice Department going after reporters, the morning after pill, an internet activist, and a motel in Massachusetts. Meanwhile HSBC is guilty of business dealings with drug cartels and our attorney general says they are just too powerful to deal with. A Justice Department too scared to go after power criminal enterprise is of no good to anyone. It is time for Eric Holder, along with the likes of Stephen Heymann and Lanny Breuer to resign or be dismissed from office for their favoritism of powerful elites and making a mockery of justice in America. 





References:


http://www.npr.org/2013/05/14/183810320/justice-department-secretly-obtains-ap-phone-records
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june13/pill_06-11.html
http://business.time.com/2013/05/10/aaron-swartzs-father-calls-for-u-s-legal-reforms-ahead-of-mit-report/
http://business.time.com/2013/03/19/u-s-hacker-crackdown-sparks-debate-over-computer-fraud-law/
http://www.buzzfeed.com/justinesharrock/internet-activists-prosecutor-linked-to-another-h
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/07/elizabeth-warren-hsbc-money-laundering_n_2830166.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/eric-holder-banks-too-big_n_2821741.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/hsbc-too-big-to-jail_n_2279439.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/26/us-motel-seizure-idUSBRE90P02420130126
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213