The DOJ Watchdog Has Referred Accountability To Another Department Of The Same Department

I would like the Justice Department to investigate what went wrong in the case against David Hearn. Its inspector general has an answer to that request: try another part of the Justice Department. At first this sounds promising. There is an office specifically named for professional responsibility. Surely we are getting warmer.

According to AP’s October 21 report, the inspector general declined to investigate the handling of the Reflecting Pool prosecution, telling Hearn’s lawyers that their professional-misconduct allegations belong with the Office of Professional Responsibility. The lawyers are asking him to reconsider. A jurisdictional answer can be legally serious. It is also a remarkably efficient way to answer a question without reaching its subject.

Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist, was accused of deliberately damaging the pool’s lining. DOJ moved to dismiss the case after Interior Department evidence showed he was not responsible; a judge later dismissed it permanently. His lawyers allege that exculpatory evidence had been ignored for weeks, that prosecutors elicited false testimony and that political pressure from Trump helped rush the indictment. Those are allegations about official misconduct, not findings establishing it.

The distinction between the two offices matters. Hearn’s team says OPR reports to the attorney general and deputy attorney general and has no obligation to publicize its work or report its findings to Congress. It can investigate some professional misconduct. The concern is not that the replacement office has no function. It is that independence and public disclosure have become optional extras in the reassurance.

I can accept that not every complaint belongs with every watchdog. But the lawyers also allege possible crimes and argue that the inspector general has the appropriate powers to investigate them. One of those lawyers, Michael Bromwich, used to hold that very job. The request to reconsider comes with unusually relevant experience of the office layout.

The original accusation did not struggle to find a public venue. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro held a news conference announcing charges. Asked about the case at another news conference Wednesday, AP reports, she cut off the question and called on somebody else.

Perhaps the other office will investigate thoroughly. Nothing reported so far establishes that it will not. But the public is being offered a process whose findings need not be public, after a prosecution whose announcement very much was. Hearn got a news conference. Accountability may qualify for internal circulation.