{"id":13392,"date":"2007-10-28T12:45:40","date_gmt":"2007-10-28T16:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13392.html"},"modified":"2007-10-28T12:45:40","modified_gmt":"2007-10-28T16:45:40","slug":"thompsons-prosecutorial-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/thompsons-prosecutorial-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Thompson’s prosecutorial legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A week ago, at a debate for the Republican presidential candidates, Fox News’ Wendell Goler asked Fred Thompson about his reputation for laziness. The actor\/lobbyist\/senator talked a bit about his personal background, and emphasized<\/a> his career as a federal prosecutor to help prove how hard he’s willing to work.<\/p>\n

“I was able to be an assistant U.S. attorney when I was 28, prosecuting most of the major federal crimes in middle Tennessee — most of the major ones,” Thompson said.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, it depends on how one defines “major<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Today, as a Republican candidate for president, Thompson is cultivating an image as a tough prosecutor who, like the character he played on TV’s “Law & Order,” battled powerful criminals during his three-year stint as a prosecutor.<\/p>\n

He was “attacking crime and public corruption,” boasts a video played at his campaign events…. But a review of the 88 criminal cases Thompson handled at the U.S. attorney’s office in Nashville, from 1969 to 1972, reveals a different and more human portrait — that of a young lawyer learning the ropes on routine cases involving gambling, mail theft and, in one instance, talking dirty on CB radio.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The bulk of Thompson’s prosecutorial work apparently focused on moonshiners. In fact, prosecutor Thompson took on 27 moonshining cases, more than any other federal crime.<\/p>\n

To be sure, I’m not particularly inclined to go after Thompson’s work in the U.S. Attorney’s office — it was, after all, nearly four decades ago — but if his campaign seriously wants to use this experience to sell Thompson’s qualifications for the presidency, the record deserves a closer look.<\/p>\n

And the closer one looks, the less impressive Thompson appears.
\n<\/p>\n

The candidate who today shows an uncertain command of current events — he flubbed questions last month about the death penalty — was prone as a younger man to getting dates wrong in indictments.<\/p>\n

The candidate who ended his first, unsteady debate appearance with a one-liner (“It was getting a little boring without me,” he said of his decision to join the presidential race) would disarm tense situations with an offhand joke after he committed a mistake.<\/p>\n

And there were plenty of mistakes.<\/p>\n

“I’ve seen a lot better lawyers,” said Burton Moulder, the former sheriff whom Thompson prosecuted for selling a still from the county jail. “But he was very charming. He had a nice, clear voice.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds like prosecutor Thompson and candidate Thompson have quite a bit in common.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A week ago, at a debate for the Republican presidential candidates, Fox News’ Wendell Goler asked Fred Thompson about his reputation for laziness. The actor\/lobbyist\/senator talked a bit about his personal background, and emphasized his career as a federal prosecutor to help prove how hard he’s willing to work. “I was able to be an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}