Later, a panel of judges headed by David Sentelle appointed Starr to investigate Whitewater — which morphed into the Lewinsky investigation.
During that investigation, the Clinton administration claimed executive privilege to prevent the Secret Service from testifying about Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Silberman sat on the Federal Appellate Panel that heard the case.
As Jonathan Broder reported in Salon at the time, “U.S. Judge Laurence H. Silberman wrote a scathing opinion that accused [Attorney General Janet] Reno of acting not on behalf of the U.S. government, but in the personal interests of President Clinton. Then, using language seldom seen in the federal judiciary, Silberman questioned whether Clinton himself, by allowing his aides to attack Starr, was ‘declaring war on the United States.'”
Of course, if Brock’s allegations against Silberman are true — and, as the Alliance for Justice points out, neither Silberman nor his allies have ever refuted or even challenged them — then Silberman shouldn’t have been ruling on the case at all.
Indeed, that’s why the Alliance for Justice was planning its report on Silberman even before Bush chose him to head the intelligence panel. The investigation was intended as a case study in the danger of elevating the kind of far-right judicial nominees Bush has put forward.
“The Judicial Selection Project of the Alliance for Justice has prepared this report on the record of Judge Silberman before and after taking the bench,” it begins. “Why? Because federal judges should not do what Brock claims Silberman did. They are supposed to be impartial arbiters, not partisan advocates. Because a judge like Silberman enjoys an enormous amount of influence in this country, and not just by virtue of his seat on the second most prestigious and powerful court in this country; he is known as a ‘feeder judge,’ having sent some twenty of his clerks to the Supreme Court and, according to former clerk Paul Clement, a ‘tremendous number’ of Silberman’s former clerks are currently working in the Bush administration. Because even those cynics who believe that federal judges are guided on the bench by partisan ideology should be dismayed by Silberman’s alleged conduct off the bench.”
For Silberman’s critics, naming him to get to the bottom of one of the most divisive political controversies of our time is even more egregious than Bush’s attempt to put Henry Kissinger in charge of the 9/11 investigation.
“Even the word ‘chutzpah’ does not describe this appointment of Silberman,” Phillips said. “This is not bravado, but arrogance.”