DOJ scandal

Two Judges Had Rejected DOJ's Rosen Warrants Before Judge Lamberth Granted Request

by DEBRA HEINE

In response to Report: Holder Felt 'Remorse' over FNC James Rosen Subpoena:

After his Justice Department fought so hard to keep the search warrant for James Rosen’s private e-mail account secret, going over the heads of two judges in the process, Holder should have felt "a creeping sense of personal remorse."

Documents have been unearthed showing that two judges had declared that the Justice Department was required to notify Rosen of the search warrant, but Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney who was investigating Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the former State Department adviser accused of leaking classified information to Rosen, insisted that Rosen not be informed of the search and seizure of his emails. 

“The subscriber therefore will never know, by being provided a copy of the warrant, for example, that the government secured a warrant and searched the contents of her e-mail account,” Judge John M. Facciola wrote in an opinion rejecting the Obama Administration’s argument.

 Machen appealed that decision, and in September, 2010, Royce C. Lamberth, the chief judge in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, granted Machen’s request to overturn the order of the two judges.

A federal judge had ordered the documents pertaining to the Rosen probe be unsealed in November 2011, but due to what Judge Lamberth called "a series of administrative errors", they were kept sealed for 18 months and not posted on the court’s online docket until a couple of weeks ago, only after The Washington Post had inquired about them.

At which point Lamberth also felt a sense of "personal remorse", and issued an "unusual" order apologizing to the public and the media for his oversight -"whoops, my bad!"