The New York Times article on the document dump currently up essentially falls right into an obvious trap laid by the dump perpetrators. The story bases a highly dubious claim high up in the piece on a way-too-credulous reading of the very first set of documents. More after the jump.
The New York Times has a story up on the document dump that includes this paragraph about the very first (coincidence? perhaps ... !) set of documents released:
A sarcastic internal e-mail message from one top Justice department official to another appears to confirm that personal and policy differences drove the termination of Carol C. Lam, the San Diego prosecutor who initiated investigations of Randy Cunningham when he was a Republican representative from California and Representative Jerry Lewis, as well as some defense department officials.
Umm ... No.
The documents in this section mainly concern a PR campaign that idiot Congressman Darrell Issa was running to hype illegal immigrant paranoia and smear Lam's office on the issue. This campaign apparently included a totally in the tank AP article and was ultimately based on what Lam argues is essentially a fabricated "border patrol" document. In the course of the document stash Lam very effectively refutes Issa. (Are we supposed to believe that Lam lies about this document being fake?) The problem, from the DOJ perspective, is that she freelances in making this response. So the DOJers bitch about her.
So, sure these documents show that the DOJ staffers did not like Lam, particularly when she freelanced on rebutting the smears of their winger Republican congressman friends, and prioritized other things (like prosecuting those Congresmen!) over their allies' PR games in re immigration (and shame on Feinstein for trying to get cheap points by chiming in, what a mistake that was).
But here's the thing. just look at the other signatories to Issa's letters slamming Lam. The Duke-Stir! Jerry Lewis!
Issa's complaint is coming from the center of THE VERY CROWD LAM WAS INVESTIGATING.
And the DOJ's discomfort with how she is responding to those smears is supposed to say what about their motives in firing her? That it was unconnected to her investigations of those doing the smearing?
How's that again?