I had to giggle when I saw the headline for this op-ed by Adam Schiff in the Washington Post: “The Justice Department must be depoliticized”. The slug attributes the politicization of the JD to Nixon:
Nixon started it. Trump perfected it. Now it’s time to clean it up.
Rep. Schiff has apparently never heard of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. Maybe he’s too young.
The first Attorney General of the United States was Edmond Randolph who had been George Washington’s aide-de-camp during the War of the American Revolution. He received the appointment for his support of Washington. It was a notably political appointment. As far as I can tell the Justice Department which the Attorney General directs at the president’s behest, has been politicized ever since.
If I recall correctly, John Kennedy’s Attorney General was his brother, Robert who had graduated from law school in 1951 and received a series of jobs that were clearly political in nature. His resume as a lawyer was quite thin. His appointment was political not to mention nepotism. The more notable of Johnson’s Attorneys General was Ramsey Clark. Must I document the political nature of that appointment or the various political activties in which Mr. Clark participated?
For my entire life I cannot remember a time in which the AG was not in essence the administration’s hatchet man. Maybe it hasn’t always been that way but I can’t recall anything else.
