Jack Goldsmith: “What Does the 60-Day Rule Require?”
Co-chair Jack Goldsmith published a piece in Lawfare, “What Does the 60-Day Rule Require?” He writes:
[I]t is not surprising that so many commentators who exalted executive branch norms during the Trump era are quiet about or seek to excuse the norm violations and norm-compliance fudges related to the Trump prosecutions that I identified in my Times piece.
But I am surprised that the department that I know cares about the appearance and reality of norm compliance has not made clear to the public why it is acting in compliance with governing norms and past practices in connection with the most sensitive prosecution in its history—especially since the inspector general flagged the problem six years ago. If this was an easy call for the department, it should be easy to explain to the public. If it was not an easy call—if, for example, it involved clarifying the existence and scope of the 60-day rule, and applying the clarified rule to the fraught circumstances of the Trump prosecutions—then there is even greater urgency for the department to explain itself.