There is much confusion about why a judge suddenly appeared in Dzhokar Tsarnaev’s hospital room and read him the Miranda warning, reportedly leaving FBI interrogators “stunned.” They weren’t finished interviewing him yet, but as soon as District Court Judge Marianne Bowler finished talking to him, the surviving bomber shut up tighter than a clam.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), who was once an FBI agent, was gobsmacked: “Well I certainly never saw this in my law enforcement career, and I understand for officers who have been in, agents who have been in over 25 years, say they’ve never seen anything like this. That the court proactively calls up as early as over the weekend and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to come down and do the arraignment and Mirandize. Because we see on television he may be getting what’s called the public safety exception to the Mirandizing rule.'”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who wanted that “public safety exception” extended to 30 days, said he thinks the abruptly aborted interrogation is the work of “the Eric Holder crowd basically refusing to embrace interrogation techniques available to us to make us safe… I know that the FBI agent and the counter terrorism experts have to be incredibly frustrated that they could not continue to interview this suspect about what awaits us as a nation. This was a big mistake.”
I don’t know if he means to imply that Attorney General Eric Holder was directly responsible for sending that judge to the hospital, but I wouldn’t be surprised – dangerous incompetence is the hallmark of Holder’s tenure. If Congress decides to hassle him about it, he’ll probably invoke the same “Incompetence Defense” he used to escape perjury charges over Operation Fast and Furious, and claim he never saw some memo or other, because he doesn’t read his email and has no idea what most of the Justice Department is doing.
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