Meese: Congress Should Probe Scandals Before Special Prosecutor

Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III tells Newsmax TV that a special prosecutor may be necessary to handle the various scandals plaguing the Obama administration — but only after Congress completes its investigations.

“It would be far better to continue the hearings and making sure that the public understands what this administration is doing in these several scandals,” Meese, now a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview. “That's one thing that's necessary.

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“There ought to be, after the investigation by Congress, those things that are found to be illegal should be then turned over to a prosecutorial agency — and that could be the normal criminal process that is conducted by United States attorneys or it could be a special prosecutor if it's felt that the Department of Justice would not be doing a fair, objective, and non-partisan job.”

Of the myriad controversies facing the President Barack Obama’s administration — including the deaths of four Americans in the attacks at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi last Sept. 11 and Justice’s obtaining of telephone records of editors and reporters at The Associated Press — Meese says that the department’s designation of Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “co-conspirator” in a leak investigation is most troubling.

“I was quite surprised, particularly, in the language used in the document that designated a reporter as a potential criminal,” he tells Newsmax. “To accuse someone of a crime and then say you're not going to prosecute seems very strange in terms of the usual processes of the department.

“And, then, to talk about attacking, as they did, a legitimate journalist is a very strange thing for the department to do,” Meese adds. “To say that it's a scandal is certainly an accurate depiction, as it differs so much from the normal processes.”