Lawyer Charges Power Play by Purged ProsecutorHere’s the story told by Mark Geragos, Brent Wilkes’ lawyer: then-U.S. Attorney for San Diego Carol Lam was so determined to bring an indictment against Wilkes before she was forced from office in February that she leaked details of the case to reporters to force the Justice Department’s hand.
You can read the motion to dismiss that he filed in the case yesterday here. Geragos argues that the leaks prejudiced members of the grand jury investigating Wilkes, and that the case should be thrown out.
Wilkes, remember, is one of the defense contractors who allegedly bribed Duke Cunnigham. Lam’s office filed two indictments two days before she left office, indicting Wilkes for his dealings with Cunningham and for his dealings with Dusty Foggo, formerly the executive director of the CIA.
Last month, Geragos claimed in court that Lam was “meeting resistance from bosses in the Justice Department, who had rejected drafts of indictments against Wilkes and former CIA official Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, saying they needed revisions.” It wasn’t clear what Geragos’ source for those claims were, and he didn’t expand on them in his filing yesterday. Though, as TPM has reported, those bosses did drag their feet on the Cunningham investigation, delaying the approval of indictments for sometimes months.
There’s no doubt that leaks did occur. Geragos quotes one of the prosecutors as saying that the leaks were “embarrassing… reprehensible and inexcusable.” Whether those leaks were part of “a deliberate campaign by the former United States Attorney, Carol Lam, to use Mr. Wilkes and the other defendants here in her political squabble with the Justice Department’s main office in Washington D.C.” and “a gesture of defiance by Carol Lam as she was forced out of office,” as Geragos argues, is another matter.
A hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 14.