Rice a Renzi

Last night I mentioned that Rick Renzi's office was calling US Attorney Paul Charlton about a pending investigation into his conduct, and shortly thereafter Charlton was fired. Now we learn that Main Justice was obstructing the Renzi investigation:

As midterm elections approached last November, federal investigators in Arizona faced unexpected obstacles in getting needed Justice Department approvals to advance a corruption investigation of Republican Rep. Rick Renzi, people close to the case said.

The delays, which postponed key approvals in the case until after the election, raise new questions about whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or other officials may have weighed political issues in some investigations [...]

Investigators pursuing the Renzi case had been seeking clearance from senior Justice Department officials on search warrants, subpoenas and other legal tools for a year before the election, people close to the case said [...]

Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), a Judiciary Committee member who has called for Mr. Gonzales's resignation, said his panel is planning to pursue whether the Renzi case was a factor in Mr. Charlton's firing. "I'm not saying there's evidence and I'm not making allegations," Mr. Schumer told reporters Monday. "But it's something we should look into."

OK, I'll say it for you, Chuck. The Justice Department did everything they could to slow down the Renzi investigation until after he was re-elected. Given everything else we know about politicization at the DoJ, this is increasingly likely.

The Renzi case is complicated, a shady land deal routed through his family business. What is not complicated is that Main Justice had the power to authorize wiretaps, subpoenaes and other elements of the investigation, and they dragged their feet. Here's Paul Kiel:

There's another revelation in the piece: that investigators had lobbied Washington for clearance to tap Renzi's phone for months. That clearance was only given in October of last year. And unfortunately for the investigators, word broke of the investigation in late October -- disrupting their wiretap [...]

All this raises a question. The bosses at main Justice seem to have been similarly reluctant to proceed with regard to the Duke Cunningham probe. As TPM reported a couple of weeks ago, U.S. Attorney for San Diego Carol Lam had to wait sometimes for months for clearance on certain moves in her investigation. So is there a pattern here?

I'd say so.

UPDATE: Interesting speculation by Josh Marshall suggesting that the recent developments in various corruption cases may be because Alberto Gonzales is trying to prove that he's going after corruption on multiple fronts in an effort to save his job. Could be. This Renzi episode certainly shows that Main Justice has the power to turn the spigot on and off. In addition, the resignations of filters like Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling, as well as other top officials just sweating it out, may be making it easier for the career lawyers there to operate.