The Justice Department’s internal watchdog has cleared a Bush-era U.S. Attorney of wrongdoing in a years-old episode that sparked suspicions of politicized prosecution during the U.S. Attorneys firing scandal in 2007.
TPMmuckraker covered the story involving Steve Biskupic, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, back in 2007. To summarize, the case involved Biskupic’s decision to prosecute a state government bureaucrat in a case that implicated Wisconsin’s Democratic governor. When an appeals court slammed the prosecution’s theory of the case as “preposterous,” suspicions were raised, including by congressional Democrats, that Biskupic was attempting to curry favor with the Bush Administration and avoid being purged in the firings.
But not so, says the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility in a letter to lawmakers first reported by the Wall Street Journal. An OPR probe found that Biskupic took “special measures to ensure that politics did not play a role in the case by enlisting the support and assistance of state officials who were Democrats.”
Biskupic declined to comment to the Journal beyond saying he’s proud of the work he did at Justice.
