Another Bush scoundrel is Debra Wong Yang, another US Attorney who was not fired, and did not stay...no, she resigned. Did she do so out of a deep sense of outrage over the Bush Administration's treatment of the Judiciary Branch? Did she resign to go to Peace Corps or to work pro bono at the local Los Angeles legal assistance program? No. She is a Republican. And, her case is rather a hybrid version. She did not get fired as Lam was fired: because Lam was getting to close to the inner-sanctum of the Bush Crime Family; no, Yang took the easier out--a path lined with millions of dollars, and a path that would have gone completely under the radar had Gonzogate not exploded. Poor Ms Yang... May you receive a subpoena as well!
Here is her tangled story, an iceberg-tip view of the Rep. Jerry Lewis scandals which she was investigating as a US Attorney, and the treacherous firm of Bush Crime Family consigliere in Los Angeles who serve as Defense Council for Rep. Lewis, the same firm where Yang currently receives her blood-money.
We will soon enough get to her official bio from the firm that paid her $1.5 million, Gibson Dunn in Los Angeles--the same firm that, coincidentally enough, was defending Rep. Jerry Lewis of California. Let me say that again so there is no confusion: She was in charge of the case against Rep. Jerry Lewis. He is being defended against these charges by Gibson Dunn in Los Angeles. Ms Yang received $1.5 million from the firm defending Rep. Lewis, Gibson Dunn, to leave the Justice Department where she was prosecuting Rep. Lewis. And, remarkably, this is the second time that Jerry Lewis has hired a former US Attorney to handle his defense. Thanks to the fine work of TPMuckracker from June 2006, we find that Lewis did the same thing with Robert Bonner, a member in good-standing of the Bush Crime Family since Daddy Bush made Bonner his Drug Czar in the 1990s through the present!
His lead lawyer is Robert Bonner, a man with a long, impressive CV -- featuring one clincher: Bonner used to run the U.S. Attorney's Office that's now investigating Lewis.
Who better to handle an investigation concerning the revolving door between Lewis' office and that of his lobbyist pal Bill Lowery than a man who's switched sides himself?
Bonner headed up the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California from 1984 through 1989 before he went on to serve as a judge in that district. That same office is conducting the investigation of Lewis.
Mr Bonner is a partner at Gibson Dunn in their Los Angeles office in the same practice group as Ms Yang where he has recently been called to do some work for the Bush Crime Family. Once you are in, you only get out at death. But, the money is good, if you can stand it: In 2006, Rep. Lewis rang up a $971,000 legal bill; that sort of money adds up after a few years.
From 2003 through December 2005, Mr. Bonner served as the first Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for managing, controlling and securing the United States' borders, while facilitating global trade and travel.
Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Mr. Bonner created the unprecedented Container Security Initiative (CSI) and the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) – both continue to revolutionize the security and more efficient movement of trade around the world. At the same time Mr. Bonner focused on securing international supply chains from the terrorist threat, he also pursued and implemented a national border control strategy to secure America’s borders. This strategy consists of a centralized command structure, rapid response capability, and a defense-in-depth, while relying upon highly-trained personnel, strengthened infrastructure and improved technology.
This is how the San Bernardino County Sun announced it on June 13, 2006:
Robert Bonner, former head of the U.S. Attorney's Office Central District of California, leads a group of attorneys that include former Santa Monica congressman Mel Levine, former federal Solicitor General Ted Olson and Joe Warin of the Los Angeles- based firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
Lewis' new legal team was confirmed Thursday by another new Lewis hire, spokeswoman Barbara Comstock, a former Department of Justice spokeswoman. Comstock also worked for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.
Lewis and his ties to lobbyist and former San Diego congressman Bill Lowery are part of a federal criminal investigation that has reached San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Numerous local government agencies have been subpoenaed for records regarding Lewis and lobbying firm Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White.
Lewis, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which oversees $900 billion in federal outlays, has not been charged with any crimes or wrongdoing.
Bonner's past clients include former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, who served three years in federal prison for tax evasion.
The Gibson Dunn directory also lists another former California US Attorney in the same group as Bonner, Douglas Fuchs. Mr Fuchs worked for Ms Yang as an assistant to the US Attorney. Small world, isn't it? Six months after Yang gets hired, the firm hires her assistant (Los Angeles Times, 1.5.07 "He follows his former boss, former U.S. Atty. Debra Yang, who was hired by the Los Angeles law firm last fall.").
Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Fuchs was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California from 2000 to 2006, serving as Deputy Chief of the Major Frauds Section since 2005.
Fast forward to six weeks prior to Attorney Lam being fired in San Diego, and the disappearance of Ms Yang:
About Debra Wong Yang
In May 2002, Yang was appointed by President Bush to be the first Asian-American woman to serve as a United States Attorney. As U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, Yang oversaw approximately 260 Assistant U.S. Attorneys who litigate criminal, civil and tax matters in U.S. District Court. During her first year in office, her staff filed 483 cases of business fraud, for the first time surpassing the historically busier New York U.S. Attorney’s Office.
During her tenure as U.S. Attorney, Yang was selected to serve on President Bush’s Corporate Fraud Task Force and on the Department of Justice’s Intellectual Property Task Force. She was appointed by the Attorney General to sit on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, the Intellectual Property Task Force and selected to chair the U.S. Attorney General’s Advisory Committee on Cyber/Intellectual Property and the Committee on Civil Rights. In 2005, she received the President’s Award for Distinguished Leadership for Women in Federal Law Enforcement.
...
Yang received her law degree from Boston College Law School in 1985 and her bachelor’s degree from Pitzer College in 1981. She is a former law clerk for U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Lew.
Now, an interesting twist on the matter is whether the Bush Crime Family worked with Gibson Dunn by having them "make her an offer she can't refuse". Only investigations by the Judiciary Committee will find answers to those questions. And, this can only happen if the investigation is expanded from those that were fired, to those that remained or resigned.
Here is her story in brief from a blogger named David Dayen at his D-Day Blog.
Here's the real scoop: In May 2006, Debra Wong Yang was beginning work on the investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis, the former chair of the House Appropriations Committee who was being scrutinized over handing out defense earmarks to political friends. Within a few months, Yang resigned... to work for the law firm representing Lewis.
About five months before Yang's departure her office had opened an investigation into ties between Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., and a lobbyist [citation added by risser]. When Yang left her U.S. attorney's job she went to work for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, the firm where Lewis' legal team works, but government rules required that she recuse herself from that case or any other she was involved with while a government prosecutor.
The Lewis case is connected to the ongoing corruption investigation in San Diego that began with the 2005 conviction of former GOP Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who is serving jail time for bribery. Former U.S. attorney Carol Lam in San Diego, who was among those dismissed last year, was prosecuting that case. Feinstein contends that Lam's dismissal had something to do with the her role in the Cunningham investigation, though the Justice Department denies it.
Mr Dayen adds another interesting tidbit:
Not only that, Yang got $1.5 million dollars to go to work for Gibson Dunn. Ted Olson, the former US Solicitor General, works there too. And the Assistant US Attorney for LA, Douglas Fuchs, joined her.
Ms Wang was asked whether she might have been a target and gave her story to The Hill:
Wong Yang was heading up the investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis’s (R-Calif.) ties to a lobbying firm and the millions of dollars in contracts the firm’s clients received from Congress. Wong Yang, the first Asian-American woman to serve as a U.S. attorney, left her post with Justice to become a partner at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, the law firm representing Lewis. She will co-chair the firm’s crisis-management practice group, along with Washington, D.C., partner Theodore B. Olson, a former Bush administration solicitor general.
Wong Yang said her departure was a personal decision based on financial concerns and the fact that she is a single mother, and had nothing to do with the firings of other U.S. attorneys. She also said her departure would not affect the case against Lewis in any way, noting that the Justice Department said it would have allowed her to stay in the position "as long as I wanted to."
"The investigation [into Lewis] would never be delayed or affected in any way because of my departure," she said. "We had 260 attorneys in that office."
She said that she had been looking for a more lucrative position in the private sector for months and that a longtime friend, Nick Hanna in the Orange County office of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher — not Olson or anyone else with close ties to the Bush administration — first contacted her about the position. She said she turned down a more lucrative offer from another firm to take the job at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher.
BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! AND MORE BULLSHIT!
Do you think in your wildest imagination that the firm that defends Rep. Jerry Lewis will hear nothing of the US case against him by the lead attorney on the investigation? In a perfect world, an ethical attorney could block herself off from the attorneys handling the case at Gibson Dunn. Are we expected to believe that Ms Yang's hiring was not prompted by the Bush Crime Family and two of their consigliere at Gibson Dunn: Ted Olson and Robert Bonner?
I don't buy it for a second... Sorry, but the Bush Crime Family does not deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to acting ethically.
Both Randy "felon" Cunningham and Rep. Jerry Lewis each took kickbacks a company called MZM that company, in another Bush Crime Family coincidence, furnished one of Dick Cheney’s offices for $140,000. Here is the coincidence: MZM then gave Cunningham a $140.000 yacht.
This from David Corn of the Nation:
In that note to Joshua Bolten, President Bush's chief of staff, Waxman requested information about a $140,000 contract the White House awarded in July 2002 to MZM, Inc. This was Mitchell Wade's company. He's the (now former-) military contractor who paid more than $1 million in bribes to Republican Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who's in jail for having accepted these and other bribes in return for steering federal contracts to Wade and Brent Wilkes, another defense contractor. (Wade pleaded guilty; Wilkes has not.) What's intriguing about the contract Wade received from the White House is that its amount equals the price Wade paid in August 2002 to buy the Duke-Stir, the yacht Cunningham lived (and partied) on in Washington. According to the sentencing recommendation memo in Cunningham's case, Cunningham himself negotiated the $140,000 purchase price of the boat in the summer of 2002. This raises the intriguing possibility that Wade that summer needed money to buy Cunningham the yacht and--presto--a White House contract materialized.
Furthermore, an investigation must begin on whether the Bush Crime Family was in any way complicit in the hiring of Ms Yang, whether any money changed hands from the Bush Crime Family to Gibson Dunn, and/or from Rep. Jerry Lewis to Gibson Dunn to purchase the lead prosecutor from the government. The Attorney General, the former Solicitor General Ted Olson, partners from Gibson Dunn, Robert Bonner, and Ms Yang and Mr Hanna must be subpoenaed immediately.
Tags: Debra Wong Yang, Jerry Lewis, Duke Cunningham, Theodore B. Olson, MZM, Dick Cheney, Scotter Libby, Heidi Fleiss, Brent Wilkes, Robert Bonner, Bush Crime Family, G.W. Bush, Organized Crime, Alberto Gonzales