the white house into the meeting room and he said what is the great strategic approach to communication and robert gates said shut the blank up. [laughter] >> eric holder has politicized in a way i have never seen before to talk to a current employee this person was talking about one of the of their divisions in this lawyers said they have rationalized and radicalized to embed extremist that does not comport with equal protection above the law that believes the end justifies the means the policy is to intimidate for employees that do not agree even modern democrats have left as they retreated by enemies by administration officials. the leeway to do anything about this is through new leadership you need unethical attorney-general and those are chosen only by the president so we have the new attorney general and intel been to bring the standards up as both parties have done nothing will happen to clean up the department they will continue to have the department to advise the president to break the law changed a lot as he did like last week you may know one week ago eric holder announced he will provide legal representation to the paralegals for the young illegal aliens in the country you to argue that is right to ease attorney general he shed provided by the law it prohibits so he cannot do that under the law but yet he blindly says i will do that we will provide the money to do that and federal law says you cannot do that it is another example of the lawlessness that pervades the justice department. thank you. [applause] >> i am sure you have comments or questions we do have microphones in the room so recognize people i just have a few ground rules. announce your affiliation keep your remarks short and with that question mark. >> executive director for the dc center but i have been a colleague of yours and want to congratulate them. i want to comment something that was implied that how can someone like colder survive the serial scandals? because he does the obama is bidding and they do disagree island with the question i talk about perjury of the civil-rights commission be was promoted even when that was exposed but to agree nothing could be done until the next election what your book is doing is great but it should talk more about exposing their responsibility even higher than the attorney general. >> the president has the attorney general that he wants. you have to be careful with the parallel the eric holder is the like of mob employer to do whatever he wants what he is talking about with regard to perjury that you only recall when the case was dismissed by the justice department it was testimony under oath by than head of the civil-rights division with the civil service lawyers and had nothing to do with it. that was completely untrue that is not me saying that but a federal judge because judicial watch filed a freedom of information request to get all communications about this dismissal but ended up before a federal judge to order their release and said those communications demonstrated it was not involved in the dismissal so this individual on the u.s. commission of civil rights was nominated city was rewarded. and have business extensively. >> sova to discuss policy in those settlements that are highly controversial. the justice department had admitted this would be done and in fact, and had been against this recurring have it in the san jackson invoked in part because the issue is using an alias. so occasionally was interested to rely upon that mr. peres was nominated to be secretary of labor the violations of ethical standards and norms. >> i am from a front-page magazine. wait finally have a setting for the benghazi incident. hit with the a minute - - officials from this administration it is a really helpful unless they can be prosecuted. it does not sound like it would happen but you have a comment on that? to read the department of justice is record to follow prosecutorial standards you might remember the house of representatives refusing to turn over documents for fast imperious witches in appalling is used of resources in those documents are still being withheld today. but when statutes say and enters it has to be transmitted to the district of columbia in they have to make determinations what to do about that but that was never transmitted. the department of justice that committee disagreed but they refuse to comply with the of what. effectively with its constitutional ability from the executive branch. >> of a congressional correspondent. to quit questions. how did mr. johnson to get into that position of homeland security with the department of justice? has an end to you have any idea who might be in line? >> he is now leaving. he has the best job in america for one thing the president wants him. the attorney general has a delicate position a presidential appointee and should follow the prosecutorial to emphasis and priorities and every justice department will decide its own priorities but also hast to have rule of law and richard thornburgh under president to find a delicate balance every time there is a fork in the road there is the rule of law should he leave the office of attorney general he would be subjected to all kinds of subpoenas he would have to answer as a private citizen in request for documents he could no longer stonewall and in his job title would be permanent witness. icahn almost a sure he will stay in the position. >> i don't believe so. >> national center for public policy research and "politico" imbedded with the justice department with the bush administration has said justice department then about hiring political appointees? >> they make them look like amateurs. we look get the inspector general report it is not just political the for example, a to the inspector general you will find in the civil-rights division have all been hired from just five advocacy organizations. eight like the aclu so i can tell you from experience they don't make the transition to be government employers you leaf private practice or in organization and go to work at the justice department you will transition into a government lawyer whose job is to represent the public as of whole. and the people who come from those organizations still think they're working through that but they have the resources to do what they want to. but the couple of years ago we did a freedom of information request of all the people hired in to the civil rights division at the start of the administration and 100 percent of the people hired were clearly higher on the basis of their ideology in the inspector general's report has a whole paragraph where it talks about the hiring process the civil-rights division clearly over looks and did not hire those lawyers with stellar credentials over those organizations. >> one of the things you talk about in the book is to provide legal advisor obviously pohjola controversial and the role that error colbert played with respect to the investigation. >> is there is the great deal of controversy by the cia interrogators to get information out of the terrorists but at the end of the bush administration to take a look at all the action that others had taken according to legal memos issued with all the actions they had done to violate criminal laws with the exception of one contractor they concluded there was no prosecution to be had but when eric holder cave -- came he reopened the entire investigation with the cia operatives if he violated the law and showing the testimony that he did it without reading the extensive memo? the career lawyers had put into a file they wrote extensive legal memos here are the facts? and he reopens these without any of those legal memos that means once again this cia employees would go through the wringer again it at the end of all of that they said looking at the cia folks working as hard as they could to protect what was a complete the run dash complete the and needed atmosphere. >> there is prosecutorial abuses in the '60s and bill gates was so taken with the microsoft prosecution he had 100,000 copies to distribute in the final scene and to ask if he wants to make a final statement in the judge looks down and says complex time is the rule of law we want you to have the rule of men sadly that is the justice department we head towards the rule of law that is the cornerstone of our liberties increasingly eroded for the sake of convenience and personal agendas it is very sad it is easy to become the rule of men after that it is hard to get it back it is possible we have seen the justice department restored after nixon and john mitchell but requires a lot of effort this is something that you have to pay attention to. >> with the office of personnel management said new administration what opportunity was there to clean house to get rid of all of these paper - - people that were hired with new legislation with 150 or 200 to miss used their authority, what if anything was done to discipline those attorneys that were responsible that were withholding the exculpatory evidence for the acquittal in the first place? >> it will be very difficult once you get into a career slot if you reply in a way you should not have been in fact, one of the things that we talk about is the inspector general report writer at the end of the clinton administration there were all these positions in the civil rights divisions so when the supreme court issued its final decision and they knew that out court was not coming in as president the political floats -- folks said we have to fill those career positions. been to the government did you are fast take six months could take anywhere up to one year have every single plot except one filled in three weeks. the personnel folks said they have never seen anything like this but this administration has taken that to go exponentially further. they have filled every single careers lot with someone who is ideologically and politically an ally with them and those of the people that will be there when the new administration comes if it is a republican administration they will have an extremely difficult time. we don't cover ted stevens. we sent the manuscript off to the publisher and every single day something else would come up from the justice department and i kept saying we have to do get that in the book that we just had to call an end to it to. said this could be volume one. >> any closing thoughts. >> and the media's responsibility this gave round-the-clock coverage to the dismissal of the few u.s. attorney's that were not carrying out the president's priorities some u.s. attorney's carry out the president's wishes carry out the first term beginning of the secateurs were let go and replaced by others that was a common occurrence he fired every attorney regardless of what cases were pending or what record they had of the success rate bush tries to replace the scandal of the day but to make that mountain and out of a molehill but to allow this record to go as it has with precious little comment but the irs week story broke on friday. it was only late "the new york times" ran a word of it. to even mention that. where can you go from here? abc news has yet to mention it as far as i know. the fact that there is the alternative media and other outlets that some of these stories can be explored is the salvation of it is incumbent upon all of us to take responsibility to tell our friends and neighbors your liberties are in jeopardy. i didn't even mention the time to say yes we can sensor folks if we wish you for the administration to say we want the power of the gps tracking device without a search warrant it is frightening stuff. this is not the government is and i think personal responsibility to tents and friends and relatives civil liberties are in jeopardy and we have to pay attention >> i don't care if you're liberal or conservative you should be concerned. if for example, your a liberally and do like the policy of comes you see you should understand those policy outcomes are driven by an attorney general who was not following fell law passed by congress and signed by a of prior president and if eric holder can do that the u.s. a liberal one to the that means when a republican president comes in as a republican attorney-general then perhaps he also will take that as a lesson and not in force of law is that you like or take actions that you don't like the public policy outcomes. that is what happens when you have a justice department that is not anchored in the of law. it is the job of congress to change the law in a way that you and others like they are to have that public policy debates with the president is not the attorney general's job and he doesn't have the authority to veto of the laws passed by congress of the representatives of the american people. and it is the threat to our liberties and i will end with that i work with the justice department it is very easy to reduce your authority and power and get away with it you do not want people like that working for the justice department or one that approves of that behavior regardless of party. >> thank you for coming. [applause] . . and competitive agendas. >> steve, i expected there would be vigorous debate but i say in the book, believe from both my understanding of history and my