Obviously the War on Terror is well in hand. Or, conversely, it’s being taken care of by those guys over in Homeland Security and Defense, because the US Justice Department has bigger fish to fry.
When FBI supervisors in Miami met with new interim U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta last month, they wondered what the top enforcement priority for Acosta and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be.
Would it be terrorism? Organized crime? Narcotics trafficking? Immigration? Or maybe public corruption?
The agents were stunned to learn that a top prosecutorial priority of Acosta and the Department of Justice was none of the above. Instead, Acosta told them, it’s obscenity. Not pornography involving children, but pornographic material featuring consenting adults.
Given that no new bodies are being assigned to these prosecutions, presumably other resources will be diverted. What’s dropped in priority as far as the DoJ leadership is concerned?
The Obscenity Prosecution Task Force will pull together prosecutors from sections covering organized crime and racketeering, asset forfeiture, money laundering, computer crime and intellectual property. They will be joined by prosecutors from the High-Tech Investigative Unit, which has computer and forensic experts. The focus will be on Internet crimes as well as on “peer-to-peer” distribution of pornography, according to the news release.
Sources say Acosta was told by the FBI officials during last month’s meeting that obscenity prosecution would have to be handled by the crimes against children unit. But that unit is already overworked and would have to take agents off cases of child endangerment to work on adult porn cases. Acosta replied that this was Attorney General Gonzales’ mandate.
Well, okay, as long as we’re focusing on the really important stuff here.
I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.