(Diarist's note: Although kos made mention of emptywheel's coverage from The Next Hurrah, I'm surprised to see no one here has picked up on this story from yesterday's Wall Street Journal. I cut out the article from yesterday's hard copy, figuring it wouldn't be available free online and I'd have to scan it in, but - lo and behold - the Dow Jones folks decided to make it available to hoi polloi, so here you go . . . - o.h.)
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday the White House talking point that "a budget squeeze" has left U.S. Attorneys' offices around the country with no choice but to take on fewer cases and to "slow down" ongoing cases.
Huh. Okaaaayy . . .
Amazingly - !!! - one of the cases cited in the article is the investigation into Republic Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Military-Industrial Complex) of California. Lewis, it will be recalled, is one of dengre's "Abramoff 65", corrupt Republic congresscritters with close, oozing ties to Jack Abramoff.
Now, according to the Wall Street Journal article,
In Los Angeles, a federal criminal investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis, a California Republican, stalled for nearly six months due to a lack of funds, according to former prosecutors. The lead prosecutor on the inquiry and other lawyers departed the office, and vacancies couldn't be filled. George Cardona, the interim U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, declined to comment on specific cases but confirmed that lack of funds and unfilled vacancies caused delays in some investigations.
"Vacancies couldn't be filled." Wow. I guess things must be really good in the attorney business. Huh. And even though the number of lawyers working in U.S. attorneys' offices fell 2.4% between September 2004 and September 2006 - an annual rate of decline of, oh, say, 1.2% by my rough calculation - it seems that, well, shucks, it's just asking too much to expect the remaining 98.8% of the attorneys to carry on, you know, investigating corrupt Republican congressmen.
My guess? This whole "Oh, dear - we can't investigate because we don't have the money," line - a line swallowed whole, along with the hook and the sinker, by the Wall Street Journal - is just another Rovian cooked-up line of crap intended to divert attention away from the real story: Jerry Lewis is as dirty as the day is long, and if the BushCheney administration and its cronies don't keep derailing the investigation in the L.A. office of the U.S. attorney until Lewis retires, the stinking cesspool of corruption that is Jerry Lewis, former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, will be laid bare for all to see.
And it will be breathtaking in its stench.
One day after a New York investment group raised $110,000 for Republican Rep. Jerry Lewis, the House passed a defense spending bill that preserved $160 million for a Navy project critical to the firm. The man who protected the Navy money? Lewis. [snip]
On July 7 [2003], Lewis traveled to New York for a fundraising dinner with Cerberus executives and their spouses, lawyers and business associates. They gave [Lewis's] Future Leaders PAC more than $110,000 that night and more in the following weeks, bringing the total to nearly $133,000 that month.
Lewis called the New York fundraising trip unusual, because he hates to travel to raise money. But he said the Navy project was never discussed. "At a meeting of that kind I do not discuss business, and we didn't at that one," Lewis said. "To this day, I don't know what their interest might be." [snip]
None of the people connected to Cerberus had ever given money to either Lewis or his political action committee before the fundraiser or the vote on the bill Lewis sponsored, a USA TODAY analysis of their political contributions shows.
Uh, and who's chairman of Cerberus? None other than John Snow, who retired as Bush's Treasury Secretary in July 2006, and went to work for Cerberus in - hey, whaddaya know? - October 2006. From the WSJ article:
People with knowledge of the case said that by the time the investigation stalled in December 2006, it had branched out into other areas, including Mr. Lewis's June 2003 role in passing legislation that helped giant hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management. People associated with Cerberus around the same time gave at least $140,000 to a political action committee controlled by Mr. Lewis. Cerberus officials didn't respond to phone calls or emailed questions concerning the Lewis inquiry.
Of course, as emptywheel so astutely points out in her TNH posting, timing is everything. If you look at the chain of events at the L.A. office of the U.S. attorney in toto, it looks awfully fishy:
- Debra Wong Yang, in October 2006, five months after beginning her work on the investigation into Lewis and his relationship with various defense contractors (hey, whaddaya know! - same thing Carol Lam clobbered Duke Cunningham for!), suddenly leaves her federal prosecutors' position and goes to work for - mirabile dictu! - the very same law firm that is defending Republic Congressman Jerry Lewis!! For a $1.5 million signing bonus, no less! (Oh - and please note: This WSJ article about "budget constraints" limiting prosecutions relies on - guess who? - that's right - Debra Wong Yang! - as a source. What a shock.)
- A few weeks later, those less-compliant U.S. attorneys whose investigations and/or non-cooperation have proven problematic - including Carol Lam - are fired on December 7, 2006.
- Using the Senate-circumventing provisions of the PATRIOT Act, the White House, via the Department of Justice, immediately appoints George Cardona as acting U.S. attorney for the Los Angeles office. He does an outstanding job of not moving the investigation forward one iota in the intervening seven months (the maximum time allowed for his temporary, PATRIOT-enabled "acting" appointment), at which time (in June 2007) the BushCheney administration circumvents the Senate and names him interim U.S. attorney, which effectively means nothing will get done on the investigation into Lewis's misdeeds until this administration is gone.
- As soon as Cardona gets his interim appointment, he appoints Michael Emmick to head up the Lewis investigation. Or, as the WSJ dutifully reports it,
To jump-start the Lewis investigation, Mr. Cardona, the interim U.S. attorney, in June called on a veteran prosecutor, Michael Emmick, to revive and supervise the investigation, people with knowledge of the investigation say.
Heh: "jump-start." Yeah, right: "revive and supervise." Yeah - sorta like Michael Corleone's assassin went to Hyman Roth's hospital room with a pillow in The Godfather: Part II, so's he could "revive and supervise" him. Unh-huh, shoor.
Hmm, now . . . Emmick, Emmick - now, where have I heard that name before? Hmm . . . Oh, that's right: he was the slimeball prosecutor who worked with Ken Starr in going after Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. Yeah, now I remember!
Emmick, while prosecuting a case against a former Los Angeles police officer as an assistant U.S. attorney, secretly tape-recorded the man's ex-wife admitting to having an extramarital affair and threatened to use the evidence to win her cooperation as a witness, according to news reports. The woman was prosecuted [by Emmick] on tax charges, but a federal judge threw the case out, ruling "the government's intent was callous, coercive and vindictive," that it "used threats, deceit and harassment techniques" and "violated the due process clause" of the Constitution.
Critics of Starr's office say similar tactics have been used to coerce and intimidate potential witnesses in its investigation of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair.
Nice. Oh, and a bit more recently, Emmick shone in this fine example of prosecutorial integrity:
LOS ANGELES – A federal judge dismissed all charges against a former FBI informant accused of being a Chinese double agent, saying federal prosecutors engaged in deliberate misconduct in the case . . .
The judge was sharply critical of the conduct of Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Emmick and Robert Wallace, senior trial counsel with the Department of Justice counterespionage section . . .
["A]nything short of an admission and apology on the part of the government is difficult to imagine," the judge said.
Leave it to the BushCheney DOJ to promote this guy to protect their criminal cronies' interests.
Anyway, I digress - main point is, the Wall Street Journal, which usually features some strong reporting (I'm talking about their news pages here, folks, so calm down), has dropped the ball on this one, and allowed the BushCheney administration's bright, shiny object - "budget cuts!" - to distract them from the real story.
If we had a competent, apolitical Department of Justice (I remember those!), Jerry Lewis would be wearing orange.
Nice color, don'cha think?