[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 45 (Wednesday, April 16, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H1548]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 A NEW DEFENSE TO CRIMINAL PROSECUTION?

  (Mr. BARR of Georgia asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BARR of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, perhaps as a former U.S. attorney 
and a Federal prosecutor, I am particularly sensitive to new defense 
theories when they arise in court cases. I was mystified yesterday, 
though, to see a new defense to criminal prosecution raised by none 
other than the Attorney General of the United States.
  In her letter in which she refuses to appoint an independent counsel 
to investigate allegations of wrongdoing for which there may be a 
conflict of interest or an insufficient basis, she says that the Vice 
President's admitted use of a telephone in the White House and the OEOB 
to solicit funds was not a crime because the use of the phone for 
something that is otherwise permissible is OK.
  I can see the next time the U.S. attorney has to exercise 
prosecutorial discretion involving the use of a phone by a drug 
trafficker, and I suppose now that the Department of Justice will have 
to decline such prosecutions because the use of the phone is otherwise 
permissible, and therefore even if it is used to solicit drug monies, 
that is OK because use of the phone is for otherwise legal purposes.
  It is a sad day indeed.

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