Court Opinion

ID: 9439168
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 06:24:00.03342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:12.104280
License: Public Domain

Opinion of the Special Division filed per CURIAM.
Dissenting Opinion filed by Senior Judge CUDAHY.
QRDER
Pursuant to the Independent Counsel Reauthorization Act of 1994, 28 U.S.C. §§ 591-599 (1994), the court, on its own motion, concludes that termination of the office of Independent Counsel in the above-captioned matter is not currently appropriate under the standard set forth in 28 U.S.C. § 596(b)(2).
ON TERMINATION OF INDEPENDENT COUNSEL QUESTION
PER CURIAM:
28 U.S.C. § 596(b)(2) empowers the Division of the Court “on its own motion or upon the request of the Attorney General [to] terminate an office of independent counsel ... on the ground that the investigation of all matters within the prosecutorial jurisdiction of such independent counsel ... have been completed or so substantially completed that it would be appropriate for the Department of Justice to complete such investigations and prosecutions.” The statute further provides that the Division should enter an appropriate order on its own motion at the end of the first two-year period of the independent counsel investigation, the second two-year period and thereafter at the end of each succeeding year. We have never interpreted this section to empower the Division to supervise independent counsel. Indeed, it could not constitutionally do so. In Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 108 S.Ct. 2597, 101 L.Ed.2d 569 (1988), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Ethics in Government Act against a challenge that it violated the separation *653of powers doctrine precisely because the Division created under the Act “has no power to supervise or control the activities of the counsel.” Id. at 695, 108 S.Ct. 2597. We have consistently followed the Supreme Court’s teaching on this doctrine. See, e.g., In re North (Walsh Show Cause Order), 10 F.3d 831, 837 (D.C.Cir., Spec. Div., 1993). Therefore, in the absence of a motion from the Attorney General, or a party having standing to raise an actual case or controversy cognizable by the court under Article III, as in Walsh Show Cause Order, supra, we have limited our termination inquiry to request of the independent counsel as to whether the investigation was completed. Where, as in Walsh Show Cause Order, there has been a dispute concerning the completion, or even a potential dispute, we have called upon the independent counsel for further filing. Otherwise, we have not engaged in conduct that might have crossed the constitutional barrier into supervision. Nor do we intend to do so today.
In the current case, as in prior instances under the statute, the Division has inquired of the independent counsel and received his assurance that his work is ongoing. Having neither the constitutional authority to supervise nor a motion from the Attorney General, nor any Application by any other party having standing to bring before the court an Article III controversy, we have not looked beyond the public record to seek support for this proposition. In this case, the public record offers ample support.
As our dissenting colleague recognizes, this investigation has reached the fifth anniversary of the appointment, a good deal less time than that occupied by the investigation in In re North or In re Pierce, and has been unusually productive, having resulted, as our colleague recognizes, in the impeachment of a President, as well as twenty-four (24) indictments and sixteen (16) convictions not alluded to by our dissenting colleague. While we cannot, without challenging the border of unconstitutional supervision, inquire as to the precise day-to-day nature of the remaining work, it is quite evident that it involves at least the production of a final report, along with such “residual noninvestigative and non-prosecutorial authority duties relating to the filing of the Final Report,” as would normally accompany the winding-down of an investigation of the present scope. See In re North, 10 F.3d at 834.
For reasons that are not clear to us, our dissenting colleague would depart from our usual custom and commence supervision in the case of Independent Counsel Starr as has never been done with any other independent counsel. Nothing known to us explains why we should visit upon this particular independent counsel a level of supervision different than that ever before afforded in the absence of some motion by the Attorney General or some other party having the standing to bring a case or controversy within the cognizance of the court rather than an exercise in unconstitutional supervision.
For those reasons, we have today issued an order declining to terminate the Office of Independent Counsel in this matter.