Investigative Power Quotes

We do not want to place more power in the hands of government to investigate and regulate the lives, the conduct and the freedom of America's workers.

People elected Donald Trump because he acts decisively. He fired James Comey. He didn't fire the entire FBI. If there's something there, the FBI is going to continue to investigate it.

The Office of Attorney General should be independent and the Office of Attorney General should have the power to investigate without the approval of the governor of the state of New York. It's absolutely critically important.

Once the law starts asking questions, there's no stopping them.

The hydra of corruption is only scotched, not dead. An investigation kills and it and its supporters dead. Let this be had.

The idea that the special counsel regulations, which were written to provide the public with confidence against a coverup, would empower an attorney general to restrict disclosure in an investigation of the president is a nonstarter.

The power to investigate is a great public trust.

[Joseph Ratzinger] is a man who as the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had everything in his hands. He conducted all the investigations, and went on, went on, went on, until he couldn't go any further in the execution.

As a former FBI counterintelligence agent who investigated foreign propaganda cases, I've seen firsthand how foreign intelligence services leverage American freedoms - and the constitutional limitations on the FBI's investigative power - to their advantage.

Congressional investigations are for the benefit of photographers.

Some commentators have attacked the special counsel regulations as giving the attorney general the power to close a case against the president, as Mr. Barr did with the obstruction of justice investigation into Donald Trump. But the critics' complaint here is not with the regulations but with the Constitution itself.

The Democrats have shown little interest in legislating, but unlimited interested in investigating every aspect of President Trump's life. It's a wonder they haven't subpoenaed his elementary school report cards.

In fact cycling has always been 'saved' by judicial investigations and not by the anti-doping controls we put in place. That's the harsh truth. We have relied on them to clean the sport up.

With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him.

I respect very much the role of the media in our society; I think they can be very, very helpful. They serve as a very useful check, sort of a watchdog over the actions of the government, and I respect that. But there is a competing interest, and that is the ability of prosecutors to get information that may be absolutely essential to assist them in the investigation of illegal wrongdoing. And so you've got these two competing interests. I believe that the current policy at the Department of Justice reflects a careful balancing of those interests.

Some publicity-garnering Congressional investigations might redound to our political advantage.

It is critical that special counsels have the independence and resources they need to lead investigations.

My experience is that the director of the FBI is particularly important to just how aggressive an investigation will be into an issue. And once you remove James Comey, it creates a vacuum at the top. And the fundamental issue will be whether or not there is support at the highest levels within the FBI to continue to conduct that investigation. That's going to be the question mark.

When awesome investigative power is entrusted to so many individuals, it is extremely important that they wield it with a proper regard for your constitutional rights, especially your right to privacy.

Trump fired Jim Comey because the most dangerous thing in the world, if you are Donald Trump, is a person who tells the truth, is dogged, you can't control, and who is as committed as Comey is to the institutional independence of an organization that has the power to investigate you.

FISA is a powerful tool - and we've got to be sure we're using it properly, at every step in the process. But we couldn't do our jobs without it.

...Prevent postal investigators from aggressively interfering with, or closing, a commercial enterprise merely because it has been deemed not to adhere to the prevailing body of scientific opinion - whatever they have determined that to be.

We inspector generals have the power of the pen, the power to persuade. But we do not have the authority to implement our recommendations or prosecute wrong-doing.

If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm—in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.

The inability to access evidence or intelligence despite the lawful authority to do so significantly impacts the FBI's ability to identify, investigate, prosecute, or otherwise deter criminals, terrorists, and other offenders.