Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, today made the following comment on the Justice Department’s release of a report on the Ted Stevens prosecution. The committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, announced his intention to hold a hearing on the report on June 6. The report is available here.
“Prosecutors have an obligation to get the process right, not just to try to win cases. The Judiciary Committee has an oversight responsibility over the Justice Department. It’s appropriate for Chairman Leahy to have scheduled a hearing to examine what went wrong in the Stevens case and what steps are necessary to prevent a recurrence in future cases. The Justice Department failures highlighted by the special prosecutor’s report and now confirmed by the Justice Department’s internal process raise serious questions about the candor of prosecutors before the courts. This was a high profile case that impacted the outcome of an election. If the Justice Department isn’t getting a big case such as this right, it begs the question of what is happening in courts across the country every day.”