This morning former Deputy Attorney General James Comey said …
In case you aren’t able to watch the clip, Comey basically says that whatever might look suspicious in the context of the larger US Attorney scandal, he thinks Milwaukee US Attorney Steven Biskupic is absolutely a straight shooter and would never bring a prosecution or hold up a prosecution for political reasons.
Now, we’ve written a good bit about Biskupic. He’s the one who didn’t find the Democratic ‘vote fraud’ conspiracy Republican operatives wanted him to find. And that apparently landed him on the DOJ US Attorney firing list.
But then he got pulled off the list. That’s made people take a second look at his prosecution of a bureaucrat in Wisconsin’s Democratic governor’s administration. That conviction got overturned by an appeals court last month. And not just overturned, but judged “beyond thin” and “preposterous” and sent back for a directed acquital.
That raised the question: Did Biskupic get in trouble with the failure to pursue bogus ‘vote fraud’ cases and then save his job by bringing a bogus corruption case?
Since we first reported on this issue, I’ve spoken to a number of people familiar with Biskupic and his record. This is a standard stage in reporting in a case like this. And the results of such conversations are usually very revealing. Often — particularly in the US Attorney Purge case — a few such conversations quickly reveal patterns of questionable conduct about the person in question. The smoke rapidly reveals fire.
Not in this case though. Having raised the questions about Biskupic noted above, I feel compelled to note that in subsequent conversations with others who I believe come with as much credibility as Comey has — which is a great deal — I’ve been told pretty much the equivalent of what Comey said today. These people don’t necessarily know the specifics of the case in question. But they know Biskupic. And they vouch for the guy’s character and reputation. They say they know him and he just would never do something like that.
That doesn’t mean Biskupic couldn’t have gamed the system to save his job. Sometimes people don’t know someone as well as they think. What we know about the Gonzales DOJ inevitably casts a shadow of suspicion over the timing of events I noted above. Indeed, it’s certainly possible that the corruption prosecution did get Biskupic off the list even though he didn’t know he was any jeopardy and the prosecution was brought in good faith. But given what I’ve heard and given the highly circumstantial nature of the case, I’m inclined to believe, until I hear more evidence to the contrary, that Biskupic himself has clean hands in all this.
If I see evidence to the contrary, I’ll tell you. If you have some, let me know. But that’s where my thinking is right now. And I thought you should know.
