Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) criticized the Justice Department's decision to read Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights prematurely on "Fox News Sunday."
Manchin said he would have liked to see the interrogation process go much further given the nature of the Boston attack and possible foreign terrorist connection to the Tsarnaev brothers:
CHRIS WALLACE: Let's talk about the interrogation, because the thing that apparently triggered the judge, the magistrate coming into the hospital on Monday and reading the Miranda rights and therefore cutting off 16 hours of investigation, or interrogation, and then Dzhokhar stopped talking, was the fact that the Justice Department had filed and so the judge had to act. charges. That was the law. Did the Justice Department make a mistake in filing criminal charges which then triggered all these events?
JOE MANCHIN: I don't know what the rush to file the charges were. I have not been advised on that, or been informed on that. I would have liked to have seen that process, of him being interrogated, go much further before the [Justice Department] dropped the gauntlet, if you will, because that does automatically invoke some rights for the gentleman. I understand that, as an American citizen, you want those rights to protect you, but, on the other hand, this man, this is a terrorist act, it's been identified as a terrorist act, and he's a terrorist. And with that we should extract all the information we can before we give him rights that american citizens are entitled to.
Full interview: