Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Americana

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.

We begin today with Neal K. Katyal writing for The New York Times that clearly Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to throw out the classified documents case because of the illegality of special counsels is not based the law and is dangerous.

Since 1966, Congress has had a specific law, Section 515, giving the attorney general the power to commission attorneys “specially retained under authority of the Department of Justice” as “special assistant[s] to the attorney general or special attorney[s].” Another provision in that law said that a lawyer appointed by the attorney general under the law may “conduct any kind of legal proceeding, civil or criminal,” that other U.S. attorneys are “authorized by law to conduct.” [...]

Eight separate judges had already rejected the claim that Judge Cannon has now endorsed (including, by the way, the judge presiding over Hunter Biden’s criminal case). It is true that one Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, recently wrote a concurring opinion in the Trump immunity case questioning the legality of the position of special counsel. No other justice joined that opinion, and even Justice Thomas did not come to the conclusions that Judge Cannon did — he simply raised “essential questions” about the office. And his questions ignored a well-trod tradition in America as well as the statutory landscape.

We’ve had special counsels and special prosecutors since at least the time of President Ulysses Grant after the Civil War. That is for a simple reason: We need a system to police high-level executive branch wrongdoing, and the system can’t be run by the president and his appointees alone.