In his capacity as attorney general, racist Keebler elf Jeff Sessions wants to fill prisons with as many nonviolent drug offenders as he can get his hands on. But there’s a hitch: he has no U.S. attorneys.
Last month, Sessions abruptly told the dozens of remaining Obama administration U.S. attorneys to submit their resignations immediately — and none of them, or the 47 who had already left, have been replaced.
“We really need to work hard at that,” Sessions said when asked Tuesday about the vacancies as he opened a meeting with federal law enforcement officials. The 93 unfilled U.S. attorney positions are among the hundreds of critical Trump administration jobs that remain open.
It’s not that there’s no one doing the job of federal prosecutor—career prosecutors are currently acting as U.S. attorneys, but experts tell the Washington Post it’s just not the same thing, especially when you're talking about a policy shift. And it is a policy shift:
When Obama’s first attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., launched an ambitious plan to reform the criminal-justice system, it was the U.S. attorneys on the ground who were in charge of carrying out his plan to stop charging low-level nonviolent drug offenders with offenses that imposed severe mandatory sentences. Now, Sessions is taking steps toward reversing that policy — without his top prosecutors nominated or confirmed.
Sessions is also missing the second- and third-highest Justice Department officials as well as key department heads. It’s a fine-tuned machine, all right.