President-elect Obama this week said his team was in the midst of “evaluating” Bush administration policies to see whether a criminal investigation would be worthwhile.
NPR reports that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) says that he understands Obama’s reluctance to pursue investigations but that he may take matters into his own hands:
“I think that there’s a lot that remains to look at, and I appreciate that President Obama doesn’t want to make it his purpose as a new president, with America in real distress in many directions, to go back and look at all this, but I think we in Congress have an independent responsibility, and I fully intend to discharge that responsibility.”
In a 487-page report out today recapping Bush’s “imperial presidency,” House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) recommends that “the incoming Administration finally begin an independent criminal review of activities of the outgoing Administration.”
