Hmmm. Maybe some of you DOJ folks or people with long memories can help me out here. Rove attorney Robert Luskin’s bio at Patton Boggs says (emphasis added)
Mr. Luskin has extensive experience defending cases involving allegations of official corruption. Formerly Special Counsel to the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, Mr. Luskin helped to supervise the ABSCAM investigation, and thereafter represented the Justice Department in hearings before Congress concerning the investigation.
I remember reading that late last <$Ad$> night and being impressed. As Wikipedia explains here, the ABSCAM investigation began in 1978 and the story broke out into the press in February 1980.
But as TPM Reader JS points out, Luskin’s bio page says he graduated from Harvard Law in 1979 — in other words, June 1979.
Is something amiss here?
Remember ABSCAM was a series of FBI sting operations targeting sitting members of Congress — a touchy and quite delicate proposition.
Was Luskin such a comer that they let him supervise the investigation while he was still in law school? Or did they put him in charge as his first assignment at DOJ?
Presumably some aspects of the investigation continued on through 1980 and 1981. Appeals were still happening in 1982.
But still …
(ed.note: We’re discussing Rove and Luskin over here at the TPMCafe politics discussion table.)
Late Update: And there’s more: This from Luskin’s Martindale-Hubbell bio. “Law Clerk to Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, 1979-1980. Special Counsel, Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, U.S. Department of Justice, 1980-1982.” So presumably he went to DOJ in late 1980, after most of the ABSCAM indictments were already going to trial. (The convictions all came in in 1981.) And to think they let him take over the investigation on day one …
