William McSwain
There is certainly a time and a place for a U.S. Attorney to issue a press release about a local District Attorney. That time and place is when and if the federal government has secured an indictment of a local official who has committed a crime and even in that instance the press release must be limited to the four corners of the indictment. What is absolutely inappropriate for a sitting U.S. Attorney to launch a purely political attack on a duly elected local government official. Well, William McSwain of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania just leveled exactly such a nakedly political attack on District Attorney Larry Krasner.
McSwain should resign immediately and should be indicted for violating federal law in debasing his office. Neither of those things will happen.
McSwain’s statement despicably attempts to newsjack the shooting of six Philadelphia police officers to blame Krasner, the public defender turned district attorney, with creating a “new culture of disrespect for law enforcement.” Funny, because when there’s a mass shooting we hear a lot about how talking about actual policy is uncouth, but trying to strain to tag a local official with a shooting because he believes internal affairs should bring more cases to enforce actual violations of the law committed by cops that’s why someone shot these officers. As Ryan Reilly of HuffPo points out, McSwain’s actually gone on cable news to complain about Krasner before so this is, unfortunately, a trend.
It’s not even good for a disingenuous attack on Krasner’s record! If someone wanted to make a specious attack on Krasner they’d suggest that this guy was on the streets because Krasner’s office has notably decreased demands for jail time by factoring in a full accounting of exactly how much it costs the state to incarcerate people. If this shooter was loose because of a downward departure it would still be a bad argument — a hasty generalization of the broad policy of reduced sentencing — but in this case it wouldn’t even be true. The shooter had a number of criminal arrests over the years but very rarely got convicted. When McSwain complains about “diversionary programs for gun offenses, the routine downgrading of charges for violent crime, and entire sections of the criminal code that are ignored” it’s a complete non-sequitur.
That a public official would imply that there is any relation is such a bad faith, outright lie that McSwain has debased his entire office and should be fired immediately if this administration had any sense of the basics of good governance.
The criminal laws in this City — and especially the existing gun laws and drug laws — should be aggressively enforced in order to protect the public and the police.
Drug laws? What does that have to do with anything? Krasner has stepped back from gun prosecutions on the grounds that they are often just pretext to harass poor communities, but it’s not like he’s not trying to get guns off the streets over the objections of McSwain’s political cronies.
Speaking of “entire sections of the… code that are ignored,” whatever happened to the Hatch Act? Section 9(a) reads that “It shall be unlawful for any person employed in the executive branch of the Federal Government, or any agency or department thereof, to use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering; with an election or affecting the result thereof.” McSwain is not accusing Krasner of any crime — he’s making political attacks to undermine Krasner’s re-election. This is electioneering plain and simple. We have a law against that.
Too bad that section of the code is getting ignored.
(Read McSwain’s full statement on the next page…)
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.