TURLEY ON A CLOSED SYSTEM

Jonathan Turley is a professor of Constituional law at Georgetown and describes the DOJ under Mukasey as a closed system, not subject to checks and balances. We know that Cheney believes that the Executive Branch, specifically the Office of the President, was terribly weakened after Watergate and he has sought to reverse that situation. Thus, we now have a situation reminiscent of Nixon.

Mukasey's Paradox
When you think about it, his manipulations are a beautiful, twisted thing.
By Jonathan Turley March 4, 2008
LA Times
(excerpts)

Under Mukasey's Paradox, lawyers cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of a president -- and a president cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers.

Asked to order a criminal investigation of the program, Mukasey refused. His rationale left many lawyers gasping: Any torture that occurred was done on the advice of counsel and therefore, while they may have been wrong, it could not have been a crime for CIA interrogators or, presumably, the president. If this sounds ludicrous, it is. Under that logic, any president can simply surround himself with extremist or collusive lawyers and instantly decriminalize any crime.

Mukasey wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that their refusal to testify could not be a crime because the president ordered them not to testify under executive privilege. Under this logic, no official can be prosecuted for contempt as long as a president ordered them to commit the contempt -- even if the president's assertion of privilege is clearly invalid or incomplete.

Mukasey was saying that lawyers could not be charged criminally because the president ordered them to commit the act -- and that the president could not be charged criminally because lawyers told him he could do it.