What Bridgegate, Ben Ghazi, IRS hearings have in common: if not witch hunting, low prosecutoral standards.

Gov. Chris Christie’s Bridgegate,  Ben Ghazi, and IRS House hearings have much in common. They raise the issue of whether hearings and  investigations are motivated by sincere  and fair  truth finding or are  witch hunting to make a political point. If it is  not witch hunting, to say the least they represent low prosecutoral standards.

The chairman of the select committee to investigate Ben Ghazi , Rep. Trey  Gowdy (R-SC ) stated  on a recent cable talk show that he was a former prosecutor and he knew what was fair; therefore he would run the hearings fairly. I question his premise.

There are three motivations for prosecution.  One is to seek the truth  or another  to accomplish some civic  good. The other is to make a political point. In Ben Ghazi, the only motivation stated by the chair is to find out whether there was a cover up or lies, with evidence  after eight  hearings and pages of documentation without  firm evidence of a  smoking gun to pin a cover up  on the President or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A recently released administration  memo was general commentary of unrest in the Arab Spring , not specific to Ben Ghazi.

 Prosecutor Gowdy is out to justify GOP suspicions of a smoking gun but not to see whether funds or methods to increase protection of State Department personnel needs to be beefed up. That at minimum smells of   political witch hunting.

I spent over six years heading the Denver district attorney’s  unit investigating complaints from the public  regarding white collar and consumer crimes.  I wrestled with the fairness issue every day. Later, I led  an investigation into campaign finance abuses in my role as an election commissioner in Denver.  If anything, I gained a healthy respect for district attorneys who took the fairness issue seriously and those who did not.

The late Dale Tooley was a Denver  district attorney who did not hunt witches.  He refused to go forward with prosecutions  that not only did not have tangible evidence of probable cause to believe a crime was committed, but which also  lacked enough evidence to result in a probable conviction.   Grand juries, held in secret,  were not called on unless   there was  confidence the grand jury would find probable cause. His standards were high  and he did not want to waste taxpayers’ money on wild goose chases.

 Congressional hearings are similar to grand juries. Unlike the grand jury system, however, they are open to the public and media  and can be abused to make political points and provide grandstanding opportunities for politicians seeking re-election.

 In any case, those being accused could seek protection  under the 5^th amendment to the Constitution and not have to testify against themselves.  That particular right is  being violated unfairly  in Republican dominated  House hearings on whether the director of an Ohio IRS office had gone after right leaning political organizations seeking tax exemptions.  The committee wants to send her to jail for taking the 5^th.

The Christie affair also  raises prosecutoral motivation questions, except hearings and investigations conducted by truly independent investigators are not yet complete. The potential for abuse, however, is there since so much of the issue is involved in his political aspirations to run for President.

A version of this appeared in the print edition of the www.skyhidailynews.com  5/23/2014