Prosecutors Says Bush Appointees Interfered
“The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government’s racketeering case. Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s office began micromanaging the team’s strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government’s claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers.” (Washington Post)
Chiara Slid From “Capital Leader” to Liability
“On the day she was told to resign, U.S. Attorney Margaret Chiara sent an e-mail to the attorney general’s office in Washington, D.C., suggesting she already was given the likely reason for her firing: politics. ‘The unwelcome news is not unexpected because (Deputy Attorney General) Chief of Staff Michael Elston advised me that it was a likely consequence of the recent election,’ Chiara wrote to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty on Dec. 7.” (The Grand Rapids Press)
Democrats See a “Document Gap” in Dismissal
“Democrats on Capitol Hill were privately urging reporters on Wednesday to press the Bush administration to explain why in the thousands of pages of e-mail messages and documents turned over to investigators, there is almost nothing from Nov. 16 to Dec. 7, the day seven of the firings occurred. In contrast, there are hundreds of pages from the weeks after the dismissals.” (NY Times)
Gonzales Schedules Many Meetings
“Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is trying to put out fires. Today, he lunched with Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Jon Kyl of Arizona, Jeff Sessions of Alabama â all members of the Senate Judiciary Committee â discussing steps the Justice Department has taken to uncover all the facts in the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys and to cooperate with the congressional inquiry.” (Wall Street Journal)
Demoted US Attorney Protested Office Shutdown, Loss of Resources
“A U.S. attorney targeted by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff complained to his superiors in Washington about losing investigative resources little more than a month before his demotion. Years before Abramoff was sent to jail, the Department of the Interior ignored an October 2002 letter from Frederick Black, then the acting U.S. attorney for Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, and had shut down the territoriesâ Inspector Generalâs office by the summer of 2003.” (The Hill)
Court Reverses Phone Jamming Convictions
“A federal appeals court on Wednesday reversed the conviction and sentence of James Tobin, a former Republican National Committee official accused in a phone-jamming plot on Election Day 2002. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that the statute under which Tobin was convicted ‘is not a close fit’ for what Tobin did and questioned whether the government showed that Tobin intended to harass.” (Associated Press)
Reduced Sentence in Works for Abramoff
“Former Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, sentenced to almost six years in prison for his fraudulent purchase of a South Florida gambling fleet, can receive a reduced sentence if he continues to assist prosecutors in a far-reaching Washington public corruption probe, federal officials said Wednesday. The U.S. attorney’s office in Miami filed the paperwork seeking to reduce Abramoff’s 70-month prison term stemming from the SunCruz Casinos case.” (Miami Herald)
Why Did Feds Intervene in Civil Dispute?
“A federal judge’s ruling Monday has brought into clear relief a question of importance to Nevada: Did Gov. Jim Gibbons, while serving in the U.S. Congress, influence the Justice Department – directly or through intermediaries – to intervene in a civil dispute on behalf of his friend Warren Trepp? The question arises because a federal judge has ruled that the government acted unlawfully when FBI agents searched the home and storage locker of Dennis Montgomery, who is in a dispute with Trepp over valuable military technology.” (Las Vegas Sun)
PA Rep.’s Strange Union Deal Needs to Be Investigated
“It’s one thing to ‘stay in close contact’ with a member of Congress. It’s another thing to provide an ongoing pension for a member of Congress to the tune of $1,300 a month, as if he worked some 140 monthly hours, when the congressman himself admits that whatever work he may actually do for the union, it is much less than that amount. That’s why we hope that one of those good-government groups in Washington, like the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, will call for an ethics investigation into the deal that U.S. Rep. Bob Brady (D-PA), now a candidate for mayor of Philadelphia, has going with the carpenters’ union here.” (Attytood)
