Yes. I understand that part of it. Let me rephrase my part that I already restated and expanded on a little.
People who work in the White House are absolutely not supposed to call a federal prosecutor and say, hey I don’t like this deal you made, take it back. Lloyd Austin isn’t a chief prosecutor.
The idea that someone who isn’t a US service member is going to be subject to a military tribunal, and in particular to a political appointee (which is what Lloyd Austin is, in addition to being the overling in this case so to speak) calling up and weighing in on their sentencing, has no place in a democracy at all, let alone one where there are people with credible plans to build that exact type of White-House-directed machinery and use it for horrifying ends. This is a time when every single person who works for the US government should be getting weekly briefings on the constitution and separation of powers, not having them bent (just a little) so we can settle some old and by now pretty much irrelevant scores.
I get that letting the 9/11 hijackers be subject to being paroled in 20 years by some theoretical future administration is unacceptable. I get that Lloyd Austin is the boss in this case and that military prosecutions don’t work like civilian law enforcement or have the same stringent safeguards built into it. That is, in fact, EXACTLY the reason I don’t like it.
I just don’t think this slight erosion of democratic norms of how law enforcement works is ever a good idea, let alone right now of all times.
