BF Editor's Blog, Part III in a Series: David Sentelle: How One Right-Wing Judge Can be a Wrecking Ball to the Constitution

DAVID BROCK: There's also the issue of Rehnquist's appointment of David Sentelle to head that three-judge panel that chose to appoint Ken Starr as the independent counsel.

BUZZFLASH: Well, I wanted to ask you about that, because you did write about that in your book. And that seems to me a key point which we have brought up on BuzzFlash from time to time. But I think it's one of those obscure details that people tend to forget. And, yet, it is so key to understanding the political nature of the way that the Republicans view the Court as just another vehicle for achieving their political goals.

DAVID BROCK: Which are what they always accuse liberal Democrats of doing. But I think if you look at the history, it's pretty clear that that's a case of projection from the conservatives, because it's exactly what they're doing. And a lot of it is done through the Federalist Society.

BUZZFLASH: The Republicans are really the ones who are using the courts to intervene and to be a very activist court.

DAVID BROCK: That's right.

BUZZFLASH: What happened with Robert Fiske, the first special counsel to "investigate" Clinton?

DAVID BROCK: Well, Fiske was a moderate Republican and never trusted by conservatives of the Federalist Society. And you'll remember that there were some preliminary conclusions by Fiske. One of the first things he looked into was Vince Foster's death. There had been a lot of conspiracy-mongering among the right-wing raising questions about whether, in fact, it was a suicide. And Fiske really laid that to rest and said that it was simply a suicide. The conservatives were unhappy with that. And I think that was a sign to them that Fiske wasn't going to do the job the way they wanted it to be done.

And so you saw, by the spring and early summer of '94, an effort in the conservative press to discredit Fiske, particularly on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. And so the drumbeat started. And then there was an opportunity, because the independent counsel statute had lapsed. When that law was reauthorized, there was an opportunity to either re-appoint Fiske under the reauthorized statute, or to essentially fire him and replace him. And that decision was made by the three-judge panel that David Sentelle headed.

Sentelle was himself kind of an odd choice to head that panel because that designation usually goes to someone with more seniority. And Sentelle was known -- and this was explained to me by one of his colleagues on the Circuit Court of Appeals -- as someone who would sometimes provide useful cover for the political machinations of others. And so I think that maybe one of the factors as to why he was chosen for that position. He had named his daughter Reagan, and was a staunch conservative. He also was involved in politics in North Carolina with Jesse Helms.

BUZZFLASH: So we have Sentelle heading a special three-judge panel that oversees the independent counsel, even though he's a junior member, over someone more senior. And Starr's appointment means that he will be the key player in the ramifications of the Supreme Court decision to allow the Paula Jones suit to go ahead. Tellingly, the person who appointed David Sentelle, over a more senior member of the three-judge panel, is none other than Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist.

DAVID BROCK: Right. And Sentelle appointed someone for the independent counsel who is known as a Republican partisan, Ken Starr. This was not known, but Starr had already, at that point, talked about making a bid for the Senate from Virginia as a Republican. As we mentioned, he also considered filing the friend-of-the-court brief in the Jones case, but didn't do that. But he was talking to the Jones lawyers. And later, there was Congressional testimony where Sentelle essentially conceded that he had chosen Starr because he was a political opponent of the President. I think it's fair to say the Fiske inquiry was going to be, wrapped up in short order, rather than dragged out the way Starr did for years in this.

BUZZFLASH: So once again, we have a political process where Judge Sentelle, who is appointed by Rehnquist to head this panel, oversees the independent counsel. Judge Sentelle yanks Fiske out and puts in a replacement that is obviously going to pursue the case against Clinton to satisfy the right-wing, because they wouldn't be satisfied if Clinton was absolved. And that's exactly what Starr did.

DAVID BROCK: That's right. And they chose someone who was very politically ambitious. They knew what they were doing.

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Tomorrow, we will return to an interview we conducted with Joe Conason and see the use of Sentelle as a tool to advance a "silent" right wing coup using impeachment from another set of eyes.

But before we sign off of the BuzzFlash editor's blog for the day, we wanted to remind you that Sentelle is still actively doing his partisan work on the D.C. Court of Appeals.  We have mentioned that he played crucial roles in protecting Bush on FISA issues, protecting Cheney on the energy task force disclosure issue, and upholding a parallel system of "justice" at Guantanamo (and elsewhere by extenstion).

Beyond the directly political issues that he has had a hand in, Sentelle has been an avid proponent of right wing Federalist Society goals. For example, in a 1998 speech (sponsored by a student Federalist Society chapter) at the University of Houston, Sentelle derided affrimative action. 

A 1998 article from the student newspaper notes, "As to whether the 'question of equal protection' was yet solved, Sentelle said, 'Only time will tell. We are approaching equal protection at last.'"

What Sentelle meant by this is that he was working hard to strike down minority protection and affirmative action laws in order to protect the "rights" of white people. 

One judge, 20 partisan years of wrecking our democracy and undermining justice.

BuzzFlash Editor's Blog