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In reply to the discussion: Obama Asserts Executive Privilege On Fast And Furious Documents [View all]happyslug
(14,779 posts)In Grand Jurys, what is said WHILE IT IS IN SESSION, is classifed as "Confidential" but once the jury is no longer sitting, all of its records are public. Prosecutors, when doing the job a Grand Jury would do in the Common Law come under a similar rule.
You have to understand, Prosecutors today do a dual role, one of being a substitute for a Grand Jury, which under the Common Law, was the only agency that could bring a criminal charge against anyone i.e. Police and local District Attorneys did NOT exist till the 1830s, prior to that if someone did a criminal act against you, you had to hire your own attorney or otherwise present a case to the Grand Jury, for the Grand Jury to indict or not. The Office of Attorney General Existed, but he was the King's (and after Independent the State's) attorney. Thus unless the state was somehow involved (and keeping the peace was NOT grounds for such involvement at that time), even if you were murdered, your survivors had to bring the charge, not the Attorney General (Unless you were an agent of the King OR the King saw a way he could enrich himself, remember the king received the land of anyone convicted of a Felony).
Now that rule started to change in the 1830s in the US, and then spread to Britain with the invention of what we now call District Attorneys. In the 1900s the trend was to restrict private criminal complaints to summary offenses only, so today DAs bring murder and most felony cases.
Now as part of this switch from Private Criminal to DA to bring criminal charges, came a decision to give the DAs the power of indictment that previously had been restricted to a Grand Jury. Thus the Prosecutor acts as both a Grand Jury (whose records are open to the public) and a Attorney for the victim of Criminal behavior (And Attorney-Client right to keep such information confidential). This is an inherent conflict, mostly seen at the state level, but does reach into the Federal Prosecution of cases.
Technically, the Federal Government has NEVER abolished the Grand Jury, but the Federal Prosecutor in most criminal cases, act like a local DA, makes the case solid then present it to the Grand Jury. In many ways, Congress was sitting as a Grand Jury when it came to the Special Prosecutor, it had the right to see all of the evidence AND being Congress that evidence MUST be public.
Side Note: Secret sessions of Congress have occurred, where nothing done in the session was made public. There is a set procedure for such sessions and Ken Starr did NOT avail himself of those procedures, so as far as Congress was concern, Ken Starr gave them a public record. As a member of the Executive Branch he had the right to ask that the record ONLY be heard and read under the rules for such secret sessions, he decided NOT to do so. He might CLAIM he did not want it released, but his actions speak louder then words. Ken Starr's position seems to be like the person who sent such a document to a Newspaper and then yells, he did NOT expect the Paper to print it.
Sorry, Ken Starr's actions speak louder then his words, and again you are pointing out the actions of a member of the Executive Office (Which Ken Starr technically was) not Congress.