 A petition on the White House's "We the People" website, asking the then President Barack Obama to investigate the Rubashkin case, was submitted on October 22, 2011, with 52,226 online signatures.The White House's response to the petition was that it was unable to issue a comment due to the separation of powers.As to the allegations of prosecutorial unethical conduct, the White House merely assured that the Department of Justice "has mechanisms in place to investigate allegations of prosecutorial misconduct."