You Go To Court With The Loyal Bushies You Have

Steve Benen finds more evidence that the real scandal with the fired US Attorneys were the ones who were allowed to stay.

Federal judges Thursday ruled that former state purchasing supervisor Georgia L. Thompson was wrongly convicted of making sure a state travel contract went to a firm linked to Gov. Jim Doyle’s re-election campaign and freed her from an Illinois prison.

The three-judge panel in Chicago acted with unusual speed, ruling after oral arguments by Thompson’s attorney and the U.S. attorney’s office.

During 26 minutes of oral arguments, all three judges assailed the government’s case, with Judge Diane Wood saying at one point that “the evidence is beyond thin.”

During a news conference later Thursday, Doyle, a former state attorney general, said the three judges did an “extraordinary thing” by entering an order finding Thompson innocent and ordering her immediate release.(emphasis added)

The man who wrongly convicted Ms. Thompson on the basis of such thin evidence was U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic. This indictment of Thompson occurred a few days after Jim Doyle's unsuccessful Republican opponent Mark Green jumped into the race and won the GOP nomination. Here's Benen's summary of the case:

I’ll spare you the minutiae of the case, but here’s the story in a nutshell: Thompson, who was originally hired under Doyle’s Republican predecessor, awarded a state contract to Adelman Travel, which became controversial because two of the company’s officers had donated the state maximum to Doyle’s re-election campaign.

There was no evidence that Thompson personally profited from the contract and nothing to suggest she approved the contract for political reasons. Biskupic brought charges anyway and managed to win a conviction, which was thrown out swiftly yesterday.

Steven Biskupic is obviously not the only sitting US Attorney with a cloud over him. We know that New Jersey's USA Chris Christie has investigated Democrats at a rate 3-4 times higher than Republicans, and that he stepped into the Menendez-Kean Senate race last year to push investigations into Sen. Menendez that were dubious. And today we hear about US Attorney for Minnesota Rachel Paulose, four of whose staff voluntarily quit:

It’s a major shakeup at the offices of new U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose.
Four of her top staff voluntarily demoted themselves Thursday, fed up with Paulose, who, after just months on the job, has earned a reputation for quoting Bible verses and dressing down underlings.

Paulose was appointed before the 8 U.S. Attorneys were given their pink slips, but she has deep connections to the scandal.

She was a special assistant to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, worked as a senior counsel for deputy attorney general Paul McNulty and is best buds with Monica Goodling – the assistant U.S. Attorney who recently took the Fifth rather than testify before Congress.

Add to the suspicions the fact that Minnesota’s former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger stepped down just as the White House was developing its hit list.

And Steve Benen mentions a few more cases that are more than a little odd:

* In New Hampshire, Democrats want Congress to investigate whether prosecution of a Republican phone-jamming scheme on Election Day 2002 was intentionally delayed until after the presidential election two years later.

* Did the U.S. Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania intentionally target Bob Casey allies to undermine his Senate campaign against Rick Santorum?

* Why was the career U.S. Attorney in Guam removed in 2002 after he started investigating disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff?

* Why has Western Pennsylvania’s U.S. attorney, Mary Beth Buchanan, spent a disproportionate amount of her time launching public-corruption investigations against Democrats, while overlooking Republicans?

* In July 2005, the U.S. Attorney in Denver decided not to pursue a matter in which bouncers at a Bush event impersonated Secret Service agents to throw out three law-abiding ticket-holders because of their bumper sticker (the Denver Three controversy). Did politics dictate the decision?

I would add the case of Debra Wong Yang, who, after opening an investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis, was bought out for $1.5 million dollars and hired by... the law firm representing Rep. Lewis.

Now, Alberto Gonzales is hemhorraging support on Capitol Hill, and his initial testimony to clear his name has been delayed to twist the knife even more and give the Senate Judiciary Committee more time to investigate all these threads.
But the real result of this scandal is that it has irreparably damaged the credibility of the Justice Department and its field offices, both in the public eye and potentially in court cases. Nobody can look at US Attorney indictments without a jaundiced eye; this latest case in Wisconsin proves it. And a record is now being built of politically motivated corruption cases, so that when an actual corrupt Democrat comes before a court, his lawyers can credibly argue that this was a political witch hunt and as a result the case should be dropped.

This is a cancer to the legal system that will be difficult to wash out, even with a Democrat in the White House and the Justice Department. You know that you can see freshly-scrubbed Federalist Society lawyers arguing in court that all corruption cases they defend are political witch hunts. Of course, we see that already. But now there's evidence that this was the case. Having politics creep into the administration of justice is terribly damaging for the future of the country.