0 comment Friday, September 5, 2014 | admin
Did anybody catch Tuesday's Lou Dobbs Tonight special on the border? I saw only part of the segment in which Dobbs interviewed Johnny Sutton, the U.S. attorney who is now being criticized for his seemingly overzealous prosecution of the two Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.
Dobbs is to be commended for his dogged devotion to the illegal immigration issue; no one else in the MSM pursues this subject as relentlessly as he does. In the part of the interview with Johnny Sutton which I saw, I was amazed at his toughness with Sutton. I thought he really had Sutton cornered, and he kept peppering him with questions. Bill O'Reilly over at Fox looks positively timid compared to Dobbs in this interview; talk about the 'no-spin zone.' Dobbs had Sutton on the ropes; Sutton did not acquit himself well at all. He had no convincing answers, and he was on the defensive, sputtering and stumbling at times when Dobbs had him pinned.
Dobbs kept asking him who instigated the prosecution.
DOBBS: ... did you get orders from Washington, D.C. to prosecute this case?
SUTTON: Absolutely not. This case...
DOBBS: Did you in point of fact ask for the FBI to investigate it?
SUTTON: No, I mean the FBI...
DOBBS: Why not?
SUTTON: These are standard procedures. The FBI was notified. OIG was notified...
DOBBS: They're notified.
SUTTON: They decided who -- who...
DOBBS: The inspector general is caught point blank lying to Congress about this case. Where did they get the idea that these agents were dirty?
SUTTON: Six months after the trial, there's a briefing in Washington that...
DOBBS: No, no, no.
SUTTON: Yes, yes, yes.
DOBBS: No, no.
SUTTON: Six months after the trial, there's a briefing. I can't tell what some bureaucrats say in Washington. That didn't affect the jury. The jury already...
(CROSSTALK)
DOBBS: You're doing what they tell you to do because the OIG led the investigation instead of the FBI. And now you're calling them bureaucrats?
SUTTON: What these guys...
DOBBS: I agree with you, but...
SUTTON: They're talking about a case that they had nothing with. The jury had already convicted these guys before these congressmen got their hearing. But of course, out there in the world, that's a big -- that's a big conspiracy.
DOBBS: If you had it to do over tonight, would you still go after these two men?
SUTTON: Absolutely. In America, the cops are the good guys.
Transcript is here; read the rest; the segments with Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Ted Poe are also worth reading.
And here is more background on Sutton:
A respected U.S. prosecutor faces a conservative backlash over convictions that sent two Border Patrol agents to prison
WASHINGTON - Throughout his rise from a rookie prosecutor's job in Houston to a position as a U.S. attorney pursuing criminals across much of Texas, Johnny Sutton said, he was bound by an unwavering ethic: Do the right thing and follow the facts, even when they lead to "unhappy places" such as errant public servants.
Sutton's adherence to that credo has transformed him from a relatively low-profile federal prosecutor to a punching bag on conservative talk shows and Web sites, where he's been vilified for weeks for prosecuting two Border Patrol agents who now are imprisoned for shooting a Mexican drug courier.
Another prosecution, involving a Texas sheriff's deputy who fired at a vehicle loaded with illegal immigrants, has heightened the outcry. T.J. Bonner, the head of the national Border Patrol agents' union, calls Sutton "public enemy No. 1." Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, a former Harris County judge who remembers Sutton as an able young prosecutor, now accuses him of choosing "the wrong side" in the border war.
Read the rest here.
And last, here is an interesting piece about Sutton's possible role in the DOJ firing scandal; see the e-mails in which Sutton is mentioned.
I don't know that we will ever know the whole story on this case.
Dobbs is to be commended for his dogged devotion to the illegal immigration issue; no one else in the MSM pursues this subject as relentlessly as he does. In the part of the interview with Johnny Sutton which I saw, I was amazed at his toughness with Sutton. I thought he really had Sutton cornered, and he kept peppering him with questions. Bill O'Reilly over at Fox looks positively timid compared to Dobbs in this interview; talk about the 'no-spin zone.' Dobbs had Sutton on the ropes; Sutton did not acquit himself well at all. He had no convincing answers, and he was on the defensive, sputtering and stumbling at times when Dobbs had him pinned.
Dobbs kept asking him who instigated the prosecution.
DOBBS: ... did you get orders from Washington, D.C. to prosecute this case?
SUTTON: Absolutely not. This case...
DOBBS: Did you in point of fact ask for the FBI to investigate it?
SUTTON: No, I mean the FBI...
DOBBS: Why not?
SUTTON: These are standard procedures. The FBI was notified. OIG was notified...
DOBBS: They're notified.
SUTTON: They decided who -- who...
DOBBS: The inspector general is caught point blank lying to Congress about this case. Where did they get the idea that these agents were dirty?
SUTTON: Six months after the trial, there's a briefing in Washington that...
DOBBS: No, no, no.
SUTTON: Yes, yes, yes.
DOBBS: No, no.
SUTTON: Six months after the trial, there's a briefing. I can't tell what some bureaucrats say in Washington. That didn't affect the jury. The jury already...
(CROSSTALK)
DOBBS: You're doing what they tell you to do because the OIG led the investigation instead of the FBI. And now you're calling them bureaucrats?
SUTTON: What these guys...
DOBBS: I agree with you, but...
SUTTON: They're talking about a case that they had nothing with. The jury had already convicted these guys before these congressmen got their hearing. But of course, out there in the world, that's a big -- that's a big conspiracy.
DOBBS: If you had it to do over tonight, would you still go after these two men?
SUTTON: Absolutely. In America, the cops are the good guys.
Transcript is here; read the rest; the segments with Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Ted Poe are also worth reading.
And here is more background on Sutton:
A respected U.S. prosecutor faces a conservative backlash over convictions that sent two Border Patrol agents to prison
WASHINGTON - Throughout his rise from a rookie prosecutor's job in Houston to a position as a U.S. attorney pursuing criminals across much of Texas, Johnny Sutton said, he was bound by an unwavering ethic: Do the right thing and follow the facts, even when they lead to "unhappy places" such as errant public servants.
Sutton's adherence to that credo has transformed him from a relatively low-profile federal prosecutor to a punching bag on conservative talk shows and Web sites, where he's been vilified for weeks for prosecuting two Border Patrol agents who now are imprisoned for shooting a Mexican drug courier.
Another prosecution, involving a Texas sheriff's deputy who fired at a vehicle loaded with illegal immigrants, has heightened the outcry. T.J. Bonner, the head of the national Border Patrol agents' union, calls Sutton "public enemy No. 1." Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, a former Harris County judge who remembers Sutton as an able young prosecutor, now accuses him of choosing "the wrong side" in the border war.
Read the rest here.
And last, here is an interesting piece about Sutton's possible role in the DOJ firing scandal; see the e-mails in which Sutton is mentioned.
I don't know that we will ever know the whole story on this case.
Labels: Border Patrol, Borders, Justice System