Obama Would "Immediately Review" Potential Of Crimes In Bush White House

Attytood's Will Bunch has a new interview with Barack Obama:

Tonight I had an opportunity to ask Barack Obama a question that is on the minds of many Americans, yet rarely rises to the surface in the great ruckus of the 2008 presidential race -- and that is whether an Obama administration would seek to prosecute officials of a former Bush administration on the revelations that they greenlighted torture, or for other potential crimes that took place in the White House.

Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted -- but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide. He worried that such a probe could be spun as "a partisan witch hunt." However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because "nobody is above the law."

Read the full transcript of the exchange here.

Comments

[asnevitt]

Won't Bush just pardon everybody before he leaves?

Can we turn any evidence found over to an international court for war crimes prosecution?

[VOTER]

Sure hope so.

[FreedomLoverX]

He can't pardon someone who is not yet convicted!

[rojo7449]

You can't pardon anyone who hasn't been convicted of a crime.

[MsLiz]

False. Nixon was pardoned without even being charged.

[HowietheScreamer]

Yes you can. Ford did it for Tricky Dick Nixon.

So much for that theory.

[Ranta]

So was Weinberger.