From The San Diego Union-Tribune:

Mark Geragos, the high-profile lawyer for indicted Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes, was removed from the case by a federal judge yesterday because he refused to go through a background check that would allow him to see classified information.

Wilkes, remember, is accused of bribing Dusty Foggo, the former executive director of the CIA. Without access to classified information, Geragos couldn't represent his client, prosecutors said. But Geragos, who represented Michael Jackson, Gary Condit, and other celebrities, took a stand, telling the judge, “I am just not going to, under any circumstances, submit myself to a security clearance so I can represent my client in federal district court." So the judge tossed him off the case. The Union-Trib says that Geragos may appeal.

That puts Wilkes, who's indicted for bribing Duke Cunningham in addition to Foggo, in a jam. Before Cunningham went down in 2005, Wilkes was swimming in government contracts. But it's been a long time, and Geragos, you can be sure, doesn't come cheap. Wilkes told the judge that his resources were "stretched beyond the point of breaking," the SDUT reports.

But that wasn't all the bad news Wilkes had yesterday.

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When a Justice Department official asked eight U.S. attorneys for their resignations last December, most of them went quietly (initially at least), agreeing to resign on relatively short notice and with no public fuss. But one U.S. attorney, Carol Lam in San Diego, had contentious private exchanges with Department officials about her end date.

An email released to Congress last week shows just how heated those discussions got. When Lam delayed announcing her date of resignation -- wanting more time to tend to several high profile cases, the expanded Duke Cunningham investigation among them --, Justice Department officials prepared to have the president fire her immediately.

The email was amongst those (pdf) released by the Justice Department to Congress last week. Writing to William Kelley, an attorney in the White House counsel's office, Kyle Sampson, Alberto Gonzales' former chief of staff and the orchestrator of the U.S. attorney firings, wrote:

FYI – our USA in SD is refusing to resign (though we’ve given her until 5pm eastern); recommendation that she be removed immediately should be over to you by the end of the day.

The January 16th email was written just as the U.S. attorney firings controversy was beginning to simmer. On January 12th, The San Diego Union-Tribune first reported Lam's firing. The next day, the paper quoted the head of the San Diego FBI office as saying "I guarantee politics is involved” in Lam's firing. And on January 16th, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) made her way to the Senate floor to announce her concern and suspicion about the U.S. attorney firings (which had just become public).

If Lam had not announced her resignation that day, apparently, the Justice Department would have moved to have her fired -- something that can only occur by presidential order. Lam, however, gave in and announced on January 16th that she would be stepping down February 15th.

The announcement followed a number of apparently acrimonious discussions Lam had with Michael Elston, the chief of staff to the deputy attorney general. As Lam detailed in written testimony to Congress, Elston had warned Lam since early January that her requests for more time based on "case-related considerations" was "'not being received positively'" at the Department. He told Lam to “stop thinking in terms of the cases in the office," that she had to depart in "a matter of weeks, not months," and that "these instructions were 'coming from the very highest levels of the government.'"

The email released last week shows just how close the "highest levels of the government" came to firing Lam when she insisted on an "orderly transition" (her words) for pending investigations.

It's clear that the Justice Department was in a hurry to have Lam and the other fired U.S. attorneys step down. What's not clear is why.

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One of the hanging threads of the Duke Cunningham case has been the fate of Thomas Kontogiannis, the Greek businessman implicated in Cunningham's plea for bribing the congressman. Today, The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that Kontogiannis actually pled guilty back in February, but that the documents had been under seal until now:

A New York financier has admitted playing a key role in the scandal that brought down former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, according to a guilty plea unsealed this week.

Thomas Kontogiannis said he helped finance the purchase of Cunningham's $2.5 million house in Rancho Santa Fe, in a deal that evolved from two military contractors' alleged plans to bribe the congressman....

Kontogiannis, in a guilty plea that was rendered under seal in February but made public in San Diego federal court this week, admitted providing $1.1 million in mortgages for the Rancho Santa Fe house even though he believed the home purchase involved “the proceeds of illegal activity.”

Beyond the home deal, Kontogiannis also said he financed the purchase of Cunningham's condominium in Arlington, Va., and bought Cunningham's yacht – even though he had no interest in owning the boat and knew that he was overpaying.

Kontogiannis, who had sought Cunningham's help when fighting bribery charges in New York, said he agreed to the transactions “because he wanted to maintain his relationship with Cunningham, a powerful public official who could assist him in many ways,” according the plea.

Kontogiannis' guilty plea was signed on February 9th (you can read it here), just days before Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney who led the Cunningham investigation, but who was fired along with seven other U.S. attorneys last year, stepped down. The deal carries a maximum sentence of ten years, but Kontogiannis' plea likely means he'll get less. There is nothing in the plea agreement to indicate that Kontogiannis is actively cooperating with prosecutors to implicate others. Kontogiannis is scheduled to be sentenced November 26th.

It's long been somewhat of a mystery what Kontogiannis was getting in exchange for his bribes. The prosecutors seem to be subscribing to the theory floated in a Copley news piece last year, that Kontogiannis, a businessman, used Cunningham to meet world leaders, who included President Bush and the Saudi crown prince.

Several readers have alerted us to a piece in the San Diego Union Tribune about a 13-page document written by former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam. We think the document refers to a 13 page document Lam sent to Congress responding to written questions in May. Her full response is available here. (pdf)

We covered Lam's response last month, which included additional dubious details about her firing. In one passage, Lam explains that she was not immediately told why she was being let go:

Following the call from Michael Battle informing me I was to resign effective January 21, 2007, I called DAG McNulty to inquire why I was being asked to resign. He responded that he wanted some time to think about how to answer that question because he didn’t want to give me an answer “that would lead” me down the wrong route. He added that he knew I had personally taken on a long trial and he had great respect for me. Mr. McNulty never responded to my question.

After a follow-up call with Mike Battle a few days later, I requested additional time to ensure and orderly transition in the office, especially regarding pending investigations and several significant cases that were set to begin trial in the next few months.

On January 5, 2007, I received a call from Michael Elston informing me that my request for more time base on case-related considerations was “not being received positively,” and that I should “stop thinking in terms of the cases in the office.” He insisted that I had to depart in a matter of weeks, not months, and that these instructions were “coming from the very highest levels of the government.” In this and subsequent calls, Mike Elston told me that (1) he ‘suspected” and “had a feeling” that the interim U.S. Attorney who would succeed me would not be someone from within my office, but rather would be someone who was a DOJ employee not currently working in my office, (2) there would be “no overlap” between my departure and the start date of the interim U.S. Attorney, and (3) the person picked to serve as interim U.S. Attorney would not have to be vetted by the committee process used in California for the selection of U.S. Attorneys.

Former U.S. Attorney from Missouri, Todd Graves, is set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee this afternoon. Graves is the most recent U.S. attorney to say he was asked to resign suddenly. The questionable layer to his case hinges on whether his decision not to force a voter-fraud lawsuit on the state led to his dismissal. It will be interesting to see if there are any similarities in his testimony.

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey just shot down one of the Justice Department's talking points for why U.S. Atttorney for San Diego Carol Lam was fired.

The department has repeatedly touted Lam's relatively low gun prosecution numbers as one of the reasons for her firing. DoJ official William Moschella told the House Judiciary Committee last month that Lam "only beat out Guam and the Virgin Islands" in terms of gun prosecutons -- leaving the impression that Lam had fallen down on the job.

But as Comey testified today, such numbers "tell you nothing" about how the U.S. attorney is doing. Comey cited his own experience as U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, where his own office's numbers had dipped due to the fact that the local prosecutor was handling a large number of gun prosecutions, making it unnecessary for his own office to do so -- which was Lam's case with the district attorney in San Diego.

As Lam has pointed out, the violent crime rate in San Diego fell to its lowest point in 25 years while she was U.S. attorney there.

Those who are suspicious of U.S. Attorney for San Diego Carol Lam's firing just got a lot more cause for suspicion.

In her written answers to questions from Congress, Lam recounted a conversation with Justice Department official Michael Elston after she was fired in which Elston made it clear to her that she would be gone within "weeks" regardless of the fate of certain cases, and that this order came "from the highest levels of the government." Elston also told her that someone from outside her office would most likely to come in to take over.

Lam had good reason to be preoccupied about certain cases, of course. Her office was close to indicting Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor who allegedly bribed Duke Cunningham and possibly other Republican congressmen, and Dusty Foggo, the former executive director of the CIA.

But according to Lam, Elston told her that her appeals to stay on in order to deal with certain cases was "'not being received positively.'" She was to depart in "weeks, not months" and "these instructions were 'coming from the very highest levels of the government.'"

Lam also adds that Elston told her he "suspected" that the administration would be installing someone from outside her office as her successor, that there would be "no overlap" between Lam's departure and her successor's start date, and that her successor wouldn't have to be vetted by the committee of Republicans in California who had before been responsible for vetting U.S. attorneys in the state.

All of this will do much to increase suspicion that the administration intended to replace Lam with a "loyal Bushie" of their choice.

Lam also describes an odd conversation she had with Deputy Atttorney General Paul McNulty. After being told that she was being fired, Lam called McNulty for an explanation. McNulty declined to tell Lam why she was being fired:

He responded that he wanted some time to think about how to answer that question because he didn’t want to give me an answer “that would lead” me down the wrong route. He added that he knew I had personally taken on a long trial and he had great respect for me. Mr. McNulty never responded to my question.

Lam's account of these conversations is below. You can read all of her answers here.

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Here'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.

Here, Kyle Sampson claims that it didn't even cross his mind, nor was it an issue, that Carol Lam was in the middle of a sprawling public corruption investigation when she was fired.

Here it is, under questioning by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Kyle Sampson admits that Carol Lam was never told of the Justice Department's disaffection with her performance on immigration prosecutions, the supposed reason for her firing.

Here Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) questions Kyle Sampson about whether it ever occurred to him when he was making the list of U.S. attorneys whether there would be a "perception problem" with firing U.S. attorneys in the middle of important investigations. Sampson says no.

Two big things came out of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) questioning of Kyle Sampson.

The first was a glowing letter about Lam that Feinstein presented from the Director of Field Operations for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. Lam was supposedly fired, remember, because she performed poorly on immigration prosecutions. You can read the letter here.

The second was the revelation that after the FBI bureau chief in San Diego complained to the press about Lam's firing, Samspon called FBI headquarters to complain.

Here you go. Sen. Arlen Specter asks Sampson about why he wrote on May 11th that the "real problem" we have "now" is with Carol Lam. Sampson dodged at first, but then said that the "real problem" referred to her "office's prosecution of immigration cases." Nothing to do with Lam's search warrant of CIA Executive Director Dusty Foggo.

So what, exactly, will Democrats be grilling Kyle Sampson about, starting in a couple minutes?

U.S. News has a general rundown which is a good start, but there a few key things to look for, a couple of which they touch on.

1) Sampson claims that the firings were the result of a broad, "consensus based" process. So let's hear the reasons, however subjective or unscientific they were. How was it, for example, that the Justice Department's second most senior official wrote two days before the firings that he was getting "a little skittish" about firing U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden?

2) On May 11, 2006, Sampson emailed deputy White House counsel William Kelley: "The real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires." It was sent the day after Carol Lam had notifed the DoJ that she intended to serve search warrants to Foggo. It'll be interesting to hear Sampson explain that away.

3) Sampson repeatedly advocated for using the Patiot Act provision to circumvent Senate confirmation for Timothy Griffin, Karl Rove's former aide. Senators will want to hear about that, and why Alberto Gonzales and other DoJ officials told Congress that they did indeed plan to seek Senate confirmation.

4) How did Sampson know that Griffin's appointment was "important" to Karl Rove? And why did he tell Congress that Rove had no role in Griffin's appointment?

5) What was Rove's role in the firings in general? How often did he communicate with Rove, who is reportedly deeply involved in the appointment process, about the firings?

6) Why did he rate Patrick Fitzgerald as an "undistinguished" U.S. attorney?

7) Before he left, then Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who managed the U.S. attorneys, made up his own list of incompetent U.S. attorneys. It was completely different from Sampson's final list, save one -- the only one who indisputably had real performance issues. Why the difference?

There's more, to be sure. Are there other questions you're listening for answers to? Let us know in the comments.

Having spent some time digging into the administration's stated reason for U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's firing, it's time to cleanse the palate with the reasons why we're so suspicious.

So here we go.

-- Lam was never confronted over her approach to immigration prosecutions, the given reason for her dismissal.

-- In November, shortly before Lam was fired, a Justice Department official brainstormed about how to explain firing several U.S. attorneys: "The one common link here is that three of them are along the southern border so you could make the connection that DoJ is unhappy with the immigration prosecution numbers in those districts."

-- Lam was fired midway into a historic, wide-reaching public corruption investigation that targeted a number of Republican members of Congress and the executive director of the CIA. Even Karl Rove has acknowledged the reasonableness of not dismissing U.S. attorneys who are leading "high profile cases, important investigations" -- though for some reason, this one didn't qualify.

-- Despite the fact that it was one of the highest profile federal investigations being undertaken at the Department, Lam's investigation into Duke Cunningham and others is never mentioned in the Justice Department emails that have been released. Not once. This must have been discussed at the highest levels, but we've seen no record of those communications.

-- The FBI's bureau chief in San Diego has said, "I guarantee politics is involved" in Lam's firing. When asked about the given rationales for her ouster (that she pursued corruption cases to the detriment of gun and border prosecutions), he responded “What do you expect her to do? Let corruption exist?”

-- May 11, 2006, the day after Lam informed the Justice Department that she planned to execute a search warrant on CIA Executive Director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo and the same day that it was reported that her investigation had spread to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson wrote to a White House official: "The real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires."

-- On January 5th, 2007, less than a month after Lam had been told she was fired, but before it had been made public, Sampson wrote to his Justice Department colleagues, "... we granted 1-month extensions for [U.S. Attorney for Nevada Daniel Bogden] and [Western Michigan's Margaret Chiara], but not Carol -- right?" Lam was widely known to be leading a grand jury investigation into Foggo and others. Ultimately, she was granted a fifteen day extension, from January 31 until February 15; she ordered her office to bring the indictment against Foggo before she stepped down, and she succeeded.

The administration has repeatedly argued that U.S Attorney for San Diego Carol Lam was fired because she failed to make immigration cases a priority. Either that's true, or it's a cover story.

Yesterday I laid out Lam's performance on immigration. It's clear that in another administration, Lam would have been commended, not fired.

But it's clear from the emails that certain senior Justice Department officials just didn't like Lam -- and seemed to harbor a wish that she not succeed.

"There are good reasons not to provide extensive resources to [Carol Lam's district]," wrote Bill Mercer, a senior Justice Department official in May of 2006, responding to a suggestion that the Department provide Lam with more prosecutors. "Other border districts have done substantially more. It will send the message that if your people are killing themselves, the additional resources will go to folks who haven't prioritized the same enforcement priority."

Five days later, Mercer suggested a "range of options" for dealing with Lam, the first one being "replace Carol." The third one was to add prosecutors "immediately after Carol's successor is named."

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Despite the fact that no one from the Justice Department ever confronted Carol Lam over her performance on immigration prosecutions -- and the fact that Lam's connection to the Duke Cunningham case remains a far more credible logic for her firing --, the story that she was dismissed because of that continues to gain credence. So let's take one last look at what the record shows.

First and foremost, the idea that Lam did not prioritize border cases is demonstrably false. As the Justice Department stated in a letter three months before Lam was fired, half of the prosecutors in Lam's office were dedicated to criminal immigration cases.

Second, the demand that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and others were making, that her office have a "zero tolerance" policy of prosecuting alien smuggling, was an impossible one. All you need to do is look at the numbers. There are approximately 140,000 immigration arrests in Lam's district per year -- and approximately 110 lawyers in her office to handle them. They manage to file around 3,000 cases per year total, one of the largest loads in the country.

Third (and it bears repeating), Justice Department officials never confronted Lam about her immigration policy.

The ire directed at Lam from Republican lawmakers and some within the Justice Department had to do with a choice Lam made. Given the chronic lack of resources -- approximately 140,000 immigration arrests in Lam's district per year vs. approximately 110 lawyers in her office --, she decided to use her resources to prosecute the more serious cases. As an internal Justice Department report summarized the strategy:

SDCA [the Southern District of California] does not prosecute purely economic migrants. SDCA directs its resources to bringing felony charges against the most egregious violators, focusing on illegal aliens with substantial criminal histories such as violent/major felons, recidivist felons, repeat immigration violators on supervised release, and alien smuggles and guides. SDCA does not prosecute foot guides that do not have a serious criminal history.

It was a calculation with potentially adverse poltical consequences, since it would mean a drop in the sheer number of cases filed. And it was the reason that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and others directed cricitism at Lam.

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Contrary to Justice Department and administration officials' attempts to paint U.S. Attorney Carol Lam as recalcitrant on prosecuting immigration cases, an internal email shows that she was "willing to change course if people think that would be beneficial" regarding her handling of criticism on the cases. Lam volunteered to stay silent despite all the personal criticism because she did not want to put the DoJ in a bad light by complaining publicly about the lack of department resources.

The email, written by Associate Deputy Attorney General Ronald Tenpas in May of 2006 and sent to numerous high level Justice Department officials, relays a conversation that Tenpas had with Lam about her office's handling of immigration cases. The conversation followed complaints made by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and other Republicans about the number of border prosecutions in Lam's district.

The email reads:

FYI Carol Lam, USA Southern California, called me earlier today to discuss matters related to the criticism Congressman Issa has been directing at the District re its practices in prosecuting/not prosecuting alien smuggling.... She wanted to communicate the following:

1. In her view, although the unrebutted criticism is making the Department look bad, she has been sitting quiet rather than attempting to respond publicly by explaining the resource limitations that she maintains affect the office's ability to do more smuggling cases;
2. She is willing to change course if folks think that would be beneficial;
3. She notes that she has never even met with Congressman Issa and would be happy to do so if that is thought useful; and
4. She will do anything else that the DAG would wish, including continuing to stand silent despite the personal criticism to which she thinks she is being subject through these comments.

She acknowledged understanding that it may be the judgment that continued silence is the best option of a set of limited options. I explained to her that, given the larger debate going on related to immigration, we would probably evaluate her observations and her offer in the context of wanting to contribute to the Administration's overall goals with respect to immigration reform.

One way or another, somebody such as myself or PADAG or CoS should probably follow-up with her to confirm our guidance lest any silence be construed as lack of guidance/indifference to her activity.

Karl Rove has claimed publicly that Lam was ordered by the attorney general to make immigration prosecutions a priority, and refused, and the Justice Department has publicly cited Lam's immigration policy as the reason for her removal.

*But Lam was apparently more than willing to change her department's policy on immigration cases* -- a policy that favored fewer, high-profile prosecutions over many more, lower-profile cases. But, despite the continued internal grumbling at the Justice Department, that request to change her policies never came, as Lam has testified under oath. Instead, she was abruptly fired.

Update/Correction: As a reader pointed out below shortly after this post went up, this might involve a misreading of the email. The line " She is willing to change course if folks think that would be beneficial" apparently refers to Lam's stance on staying silent in response to criticism, rather than her office's immigration policy.

Considering the overall context of the email, however, it's apparent the conversation that took place between two people on the same side of a debate trying to develop a PR strategy. In other words, if the Justice Department didn't agree with Lam's policy on immigration prosecutions, they would have been on Issa's side, not Lam's. But there was apparently no discussion about revising the policy, because that wasn't what was at issue.

Ed. Note: thanks to muchomaas for catching this in the comments.

Yesterday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) revealed that U.S. Attorney Carol Lam had notified the Justice Department on May 10, 2006, that she intended to execute search warrants on CIA executive director Dusty Foggo. The next day, Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson wrote in an email that "the real problem we have right now" is with Lam, adding that they should have a replacement ready by November.

U.S. News gives a little more context for Sampson's urgency:

In politically sensitive cases, the U.S. attorney's office notifies senior Justice Department leadership of developments in the case by sending what's known as an urgent report.

In this case, the U.S. attorney in San Diego sent an urgent report to Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty at 10:16 a.m. on May 10, notifying them of the imminent search....

"The phone calls would have been flying," says a former Justice official who has worked closely with the CIA. "The CIA would be jumping up and down and putting pressure to stop it or slow it down."

Many intelligence sources say the concern would not have been over Foggo personally–because he was generally "despised"–but that the CIA would have had an institutional interest in keeping itself out of any scandal.

"There would have been a two-pronged attack," says the former Justice official, "to protect the agency and to get rid of Lam." Even though Foggo had quit the agency, he still had many friends there who viewed themselves as being at risk.

"It's second nature to the CIA," says the former official. "Somebody's causing trouble. Get rid of them."

In March of 2005, Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff sent White House counsel Harriet Miers a list rating U.S. attorneys.

Certain prosecutors were rated “strong U.S. Attorneys who have produced, managed well, and exhibited loyalty to the President and Attorney General," others had not "distinguished themselves either positively or negatively, and others Sampson “recommend[ed] removing" -- those were “weak U.S. Attorneys who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration initiatives.”

Carol Lam was one of the prosecutors Sampson recommended removing.

This was, of course, a full three months before the Duke Cunningham scandal came to light. The San Diego Union-Tribune broke the story on June 12, 2005.* So does that mean that Lam really was removed for other reasons?

Well, Sampson also wrote this list a number of months before Republicans started raising complaints about Lam's handling of border cases. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who led the charge against Lam, began publicly raising concerns in the summer of 2005.*

And while the list makes clear that Lam, one way or another, got on Sampson's hit list, it's very unclear whether that was because of some deficiency in performance.

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The Los Angeles Times makes the case that Carol Lam was fired because she "ignored immigration issues," as the administration has argued.

By contrast, here's the Justice Deparment making the case for Carol Lam's handling of broder prosecutions three months before she was fired. Somehow, the letter doesn't merit a mention in the Times' piece.

Earlier, we noted that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) had referenced a letter she'd received from the Justice Department essentially vouching for U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's approach in prosecuting border cases.

You can read the letter here. It's dated August 23, 2006. Little more than three months later, Lam was fired -- according to the administration, because of her office's poor performance prosecuting border cases.

During her opening statement during this morning's hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) revealed that the Justice Department had written to her last year and assured her that Carol Lam was doing a fine job prosecuting border cases -- even though they've said that the reason for Lam's firing was her poor performance on border cases.

From Feinstein's statement:

The Department has used the fact that I wrote a letter on June 15 to the Attorney General concerning the San Diego region, and in that I asked some questions: What are the guidelines for the U.S. Attorney Southern District of California? How do these guidelines differ from other border sections nationwide? I asked about immigration cases.

Here is the response that I got under cover of August 23, in a letter signed by Will Moschella. And I ask that both these letters be added to the record.

“That office [referring to Mrs. Lam’s office], is presently committing fully half of its Assistant U.S. Attorneys to prosecute criminal immigration cases. Prosecutions for alien smuggling in the Southern District under USC sections 1234 are rising sharply in Fiscal Year 2006. As of March 2006, the halfway point in the fiscal year, there were 342 alien smuggling cases filed in that jurisdiction. This compares favorable with the 484 alien smuggling prosecutions brought there during the entirety of Fiscal Year 2005.”

The letter goes on to essentially say that Mrs. Lam is cooperating; that they have reviewed it and the Department is satisfied.

Update: You can read the letter here.

Act I of today's congressional hearing marathon on the administration's firing of federal prosecutors takes place in the Senate. Four of the prosecutors will be testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee: San Diego's Carol Lam, Seattle's John McKay, New Mexico's David Iglesias and Arkansas' Bud Cummins. The hearing has just started, and we'll be posting running updates.

For those readers who want to watch, the hearing is being broadcast on C-Span 3 and webcast on the Senate Judicary's website.

Update: The first revelation of the hearing comes from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who says that in August of last year, in response to her letter questioning U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's office's performance prosecuting immigration cases, she received a letter from the Justice Department supporting Lam, saying that the DoJ was "satisfied" with Lam's performance.

Update: David Iglesias just gave a devastating rendering of his conversation with Sen. Pete Domenici. We'll get the video up as soon as we can. Details here.

Update: Bud Cummins and John McKay just corroborated the McClatchy report that Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, communicated a threat to the USAs that if they continued to stir up controversy, more information would come out. Details and video soon. McKay called the call "hugely inappropriate." Bud Cummins has a copy of the email describing the call, which will be released as part of the hearing.

Update: John McKay also revealed that Rep. Doc Hastings' (R-WA) chief of staff called him to question him about an investigation. Details here.

Update: David Iglesias just recounted his conversation with Michael Battle, the DoJ official who recently resigned and who made the calls to fire the prosecutors on December 7th. Iglesias said that he asked Battle why he wasn being fired. Battle replied, according to Iglesias: "I don't know and I don't want to know. All I know is that this came from on high."

Update: Here's a copy of the email that U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins gave to the committee outlining his conversation wtih Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

Update: We've begun uploading video from the hearing. See here and here.

Update: Maybe the biggest bombshell during the hearing was admissions from Cummins, McKay and Iglesias that they would have opened an obstruction investigation based on the phone call to Cummins from Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, if they were still in office.