The Breach: Why the Justice Department Is Afraid to Prosecute White-Collar Criminals
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jesse Eisinger and host Lindsay Beyerstein discuss how and why the Justice Department is so hesitant to prosecute white-collar criminals, even though their crimes threaten the stability of our economy and the basic principle of equality before the law.
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As a U.S. attorney in 2002, James Comey mocked prosecutors who never lost a case as members of “The Chickenshit Club.” In Comey’s opinion, if a prosecuting attorney never lost, it meant they were too risk-averse and failed to bring the most important cases to trial. In his book by the same name, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica argues that the entire U.S. Department of Justice has become a “Chickenshit Club” for prosecutors who are unwilling and unable to take on white-collar criminals at the biggest banks and financial firms.
In the latest episode of The Breach, Eisinger and host Lindsay Beyerstein discuss how and why this occurs—despite these crimes threatening the stability of the economy and the basic principle of equality before the law.
Recommended Reading:
“Possible Presidential Pardon Scenarios“, by Andy Wright for Just Security, July 2017