Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story have a must-read article in the New York Times on an important aspect of our two-tier justice system, in which only little people seem to be subject to the full force of the law. The article describes how, starting with the Bush Administration and continuing under Obama, the Department of Justice decided to exit the business of prosecuting suspected corporate criminals.
This section is stunning:
But by 2005, a debate was growing over aggressive prosecutions, as some business leaders had been criticizing the approach as perhaps too zealous.
That May, Justice Department officials met ahead of a session with a cross-agency group called the Corporate Fraud Task Force…
In the meeting, the deputy attorney general at the time, James B. Comey, posed questions that surprised some attendees, according to two people there who asked to remain anonymous because they were not supposed to discuss private meetings.
Was American business being hurt by the Justice Department’s investigations?, Mr. Comey asked, according to these two people, who said they thought the message had come from others. He cautioned colleagues to be responsible. “It was a total retrenchment,” one of the people said. “It was like we were going backwards.”
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