Guest Editorial: Loyalty trumps qualifications in selection of U.S. attorney for Upstate New York.
The upstate publication Syracuse.com takes a critical view of Croton attorney John Sarcone's appointment as acting U.S. Attorney.
by the Advance Media New York Editorial Board
Editor’s Note: This Editorial Board Opinion was first published on Syracuse.com on July 20. It is republished here with permission. Advance Media New York is the publisher of Syracuse.com and The Post-Standard in Syracuse.
The constitutional clash between the executive branch and the judicial branch came home to Upstate New York last week in the bizarre saga of John Sarcone III, acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York.
Sarcone is a lawyer but has never been a prosecutor. His primary qualification for the job appears to be his loyalty to President Donald Trump and his desire to carry out the president’s agenda. A panel of nine federal judges apparently thinks he’s unqualified and bounced him from the job. The Trump administration figured out a norm-busting workaround to keep him there.
Sarcone said he intends to hold the job “indefinitely” — or until Trump appoints him as a federal judge. We sincerely hope he won’t treat the job of top federal prosecutor in Upstate New York as a placeholder until something better comes along.
Sarcone has been in the news for all the wrong reasons: social media posts accusing top Democrats of treason; an odd, embellished encounter with a knife-wielding man outside his Albany hotel; his supposed residence in a boarded-up building; and a messy fight with the judiciary to keep his job.
U.S. attorneys are supposed to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Trump’s Justice Department isn’t playing by those rules, so it was up to a nine-judge panel of district court judges to decide if Sarcone’s interim appointment should become permanent. They declined, effectively ousting him.
Their decision not to appoint Sarcone should have been the end of it. But if you’ve been paying attention, you know that Trump doesn’t take “no” for an answer from the courts. The Justice Department appointed Sarcone as a “special attorney” to the office. The practical effect is that he is once again acting U.S. attorney in charge.
The story took another turn last week when syracuse.com politics editor Chris Baker literally ran into Sarcone at a charity event in downtown Syracuse. Sarcone had declined to speak to reporters after complaining he was being treated unfairly. But he was friendly and talkative in person, describing the fight to keep his job as a high-stakes card game where Trump held the better cards. Later, he thought better of that analogy, telling Baker the episode had unnecessarily pitted the executive branch and the president against the judicial branch.
Alas, that is the whole point. Trump has torn down the post-Watergate consensus that the Justice Department should make prosecutorial decisions independent of politics. Perversely, executive orders banning the “weaponization” of the Justice Department have weaponized the Justice Department against people who have crossed the president – from New York Attorney General Letitia James to former cybersecurity czar Christopher Krebs to the federal agents and prosecutors who went after the Jan. 6 rioters. Trump’s enemies list would make Richard Nixon blush.
Is that the kind of federal prosecutor Sarcone intends to be? We will see.
The good news is the daily business of justice in Upstate typically is carried out by dedicated career prosecutors who joined in an era when the Justice Department had a higher calling than political retribution.
But what does it mean when their leader is unqualified and politically motivated? Upstate New Yorkers are about to find out.
About Syracuse.com editorials
Editorials represent the collective opinion of the Advance Media New York editorial board. Our opinions are independent of news coverage. Read our mission statement. Members of the editorial board are Tim Kennedy, Trish LaMonte and Marie Morelli.
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I’ve deleted a comment that used the term DEI in a way that was clearly racist in its context and intent. This violates the Chronicle’s policy against hate speech. The commenter in question has violated the comments policy on numerous occasions and thus appropriate action has been taken to prevent further violations.
Given a few of the comments on this Guest Editorial I just wanted to clarify editorial policy here. It is not a “hit piece” but an opinion piece that raises two related issues already much discussed publicly about Sarcone’s appointment as U.S. Attorney:
1. Whether or not he is qualified, given his lack of prosecutorial experience.
2. Whether this is a political appointment due to his well known and longstanding loyalty to Donald Trump.
It has nothing to do with how well liked John is or is not in Croton, how deep his family roots, etc. It is routine to publish such opinion pieces about Trump appointees, and we have asked John to respond if he wants to with his own Guest Editorial—thus giving him “equal time.” He has not yet responded to that invitation but I hope he will, or that someone else in the DOJ or the White House will do so, as we also suggested.