Questioning DOJ Independence

Recent new stories suggest that part of the conflict between James Comey and President Trump arose out of Comey’s desire to keep the FBI independent from the administration.  Comey’s goal was not an idiosyncracy; there are regulations that limit and channel contact between the White House and officials at the Department of Justice.

Given the events of the past several months, a debate has emerged over how independent the FBI can or should be from the administration.  Most of what I read seems to assume that such independence should exist, and that it is an unmitigated positive.  I am not so sure. 

To the extent that the FBI is independent from the administration, the FBI is not democratically accountable.  Of course, most democratic accountability in the Executive Branch is indirect.  The primary democratic check on executive officials is the presidential election.  The president can select the individuals he or she wants to appoint to various positions, the president can tell that official which policies to pursue, and the president generally has the ability to fire the official.  But indirect accountability comes at a price: independence from the administration.

Years ago, when the legal community was in an uproar about whether the Department of Justice had become too politicized under George W. Bush’s administration, I had the good fortune to attend a panel on the U.S. Attorney firings.  The panel consisted of all of the former U.S. Attorneys who had been fired at the beginning of President Bush’s second term.  One U.S. Attorney said he had been fired for refusing to seek the death penalty in a particular case.  Another said he’d been fired for refusing to move quickly on political corruption charges against Democratic officials.  And a third said that he had been fired for refusing to bring obscenity charges against internet providers.  The prevailing sentiment, both at the panel and also in the press, was that, although the President had the power to fire those U.S. Attorneys, the decision to fire these particular attorneys was inappropriate because it had been done for “political reasons.” 

The panel was fascinating, but I had the same question then that I do now:  If prosecutors, the FBI director, and other executive officials derive their legitimacy from their indirect democratic accountability, then why is it a scandal to fire such an official for “political” reasons.  How do you draw the line between a legitimate “policy” reason and an illegitimate “political” reason? 

Because I apparently do not lack self-confidence, I asked the panelists this question.  And the answer that I got was, essentially, that general policy directives are okay, but any attempt to influence decisions in individual cases are off-limits.  At the time, I thought that this was a satisfying answer.  But now I am not so sure.

When it comes to police and prosecution, policy statements don’t seem to mean very much.  Policy statements, like the charging memos that Attorney Generals regularly disseminate to federal prosecutors, are necessarily general.  And they invariably leave room for professional judgment.  In fact, you might say that the true policies of a prosecutor or law enforcement office can be discovered only by assessing how that professional judgment is employed in different circumstances.  To use one of the examples from the U.S. Attorney firing, it doesn’t tell you much to know that a particular prosecutor supports capital punishment; what you really care about is the circumstances under which he or she will seek the death penalty.

Of course, the news accounts of the interactions between Director Comey and President Trump are not a simple example of law enforcement independence.  Because the investigation at issue involved the President’s own campaign, there are a multitude of other issues at play.  But whatever we take away from the Comey affair, I don’t think it should be a lesson of absolute independence for the Department of Justice.