Who Didn't See This Coming?

The consequence of excessively politicizing the Justice Department of the United States is to open the justice system itself to attack, and to let potential criminals to be set free because the very notion of blind justice has been tainted.

Defense lawyers in a growing number of cases are raising questions about the motives of government lawyers who have brought charges against their clients. In court papers, they are citing the furor over the U.S. attorney dismissals as evidence that their cases may have been infected by politics.

Justice officials say those concerns are unfounded and constitute desperate measures by desperate defendants. But the affair has given defendants and their lawyers some new energy, which is complicating life for the prosecutors.

Missouri lawyers have invoked the controversy in challenging last year's indictment of a company owned by a prominent Democrat, on suspicion of violating federal wage and hour laws. The indictment, which came two months after the owner announced that she was running for political office, was obtained by a Republican U.S. attorney who also has been criticized because he charged workers for a left-leaning political group on the eve of the 2006 midterm election.

A lawyer in a child pornography case recently defended his client at a federal trial in Minnesota in part by questioning the motives of the Republican U.S. attorney, who has come under scrutiny in the congressional investigation into the prosecutor purge.

Lawyers for a former county official in Delaware who has been accused of corruption asked a judge in early May to allow them to subpoena the Justice Department and White House for documents to see whether political motives factored into charges being brought against the official. They cited the brewing controversy inside the Beltway.

"Those revelations dramatically reinforce the reasons to believe that considerations beyond mere law enforcement are behind this prosecution," the lawyers wrote.

Whether or not these criticisms are founded is besides the point. It's another arrow in the quiver of defense lawyers across the country, and once the credibility of our federal justice system is questioned, it's nearly impossible to remove the stench. We have a cat urine Justice Department, in effect.

And the Attorney General is trying to fix this by politicizing the department even more.

Gonzales recently proposed tightening the leash on the men and women who prosecute federal crimes across the nation.

Gonzales described what he delicately calls "a more vigorous and a little bit more formal process" for annually evaluating prosecutors. What that means, as he explained it, is hauling in every U.S. attorney for a meeting to hear, among other things, politicians' beefs against the prosecutor.

If that should happen, expect the fair-mindedness and independence Americans still count on from their Justice Department to slip.

In testimony to Congress and comments at the National Press Club, Gonzales framed the meetings as a way of improving communications. But it also looks a lot like a way to remind recalcitrant U.S. attorneys what the home team expects.

This will simply lead to even more charges of politicization in courtrooms across the nation. And it will make it even more difficult to weed through the real criminal activity and the charges which was trumped up for political purposes.