Earlier we noted that, in speaking this morning about Eric Holder, his pick for Attorney General, Barack Obama seemed to go out of his way to suggest that Holder would reverse the politicization of DOJ that we saw under President Bush and Alberto Gonzales.

Holder's own remarks backed up that notion. He said:

It is incumbent upon those of us who lead the Department to ensure not only that the nation is safe but also that our laws and traditions are respected. There is not a tension between those two. We can and we must ensure that the American people remain secure and that the great constitutional guarantees that define us as a nation are truly valued. For example, working with Republicans and Democrats in Congress, should I be confirmed, we look forward to actually structuring policies that are both protective and consistent with who we are as a nation.

And Holder included an interesting hint suggesting that he may be more aggressive than his predecessors under Bush in going after corporate malfeasance -- specifically, one would assume, in regard to the current financial crisis:

National security concerns are not defined only by the challenges created by terrorists abroad, but also by criminals in our midst, whether they be criminals located on the street or in a boardroom.

Holder's full remarks follow after the jump...

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Given our coverage of the unprecedented politicization of the Department of Justice under President Bush, we thought this passage from Barack Obama's prepared remarks this morning -- at which he announced Eric Holder as his pick for Attorney General, among other selections -- was worth noting:

Eric also has the combination of toughness and independence that we need at the Justice Department. Let me be clear: the Attorney General serves the American people. And I have every expectation that Eric will protect our people, uphold the public trust, and adhere to our Constitution.

In other words, Obama is sending a message that Holder won't see his role as being the president's personal lawyer -- which was how Alberto Gonzales, who had been Bush's lawyer both in the White House and in Texas, seemed to view the job.

Last week we told you about a letter sent to the judge in the Ted Stevens trial, from a witness claiming that he lied on the stand when he said he had no immunity deal with prosecutors.

Now, reports the Washington Post, the judge, Emmet Sullivan, has scheduled a hearing for Monday to consider a request from Stevens' lawyers to question the witness, David Anderson, a welder who worked on Stevens' home.

Anderson also alleged in his letter that prosecutors allowed him to look at documents he wasn't supposed to see.

Based on Anderson's claims, defense lawyers last week filed documents accusing prosecutors of "suborning perjury and making intentionally false statements." The Justice Department has denied the allegations.

Stevens was convicted last month of making false statements on his Senate disclosure forms, hiding $250,000 in gifts from Bill Allen, the owner of an oil-services contracting company -- and Anderson's uncle. Shortly afterwards, he narrowly lost his Senate reelection bid.

And speaking of Uncle Ted, at last the wait is over. We've updated our "Ted Stevens' Road To Ruin" timeline, so you can now see in glorious technicolor just how the curmudgeonly lawmaker got to this point. Check it out...

The news that a House committee plans to look into the events that led to that fateful investigation of Eliot Spitzer may have some observers licking their chops in anticipation of finding out whether the probe was politically motivated payback for the governor's targeting of Wall Street.

That notion has persisted, despite little concrete evidence, almost since the news of Spitzer's tryst with Ashley Dupre first surfaced in March.

But don't get too excited just yet. Steve Adamske, a spokesman for Rep. Barney Frank -- who, as chair of the House Financial Services committee, will run the inquiry -- told TPMmuckraker in an interview that in fact the effort won't be designed primarily to look at that question. Rather, said Adamske, it will focus on the somewhat drier subject of whether increased scrutiny by the Treasury Department of banking transactions, as required by the Patriot Act, is an effective counter-terrorism tool. Banks have in the past complained about the increased paperwork required by the law, arguing that in addition to being burdensome, it does little to help fight terrorism.

The Spitzer saga is the hook for an inquiry into that subject because the investigation of the governor began after his bank filed a routine report to Treasury about a series of wire transfers he made to QAT International, a shell company connected to the Emperor's Club prostitution ring. After another bank filed reports about suspicious activities by QAT International, investigators noticed the previous report about Spitzer, and began looking closer.

That focus may disappoint some committee members. Michael Capuano, a Massachusetts Democrat on the committee, seems to see the issue differently. "The question was: Why were they looking for this? Is this political retribution?" he told the New York Times.

But it's by no means clear that Frank's inquiry will answer that question.

The White House is unlikely to grant sweeping pardons to former Bush administration officials who may have encouraged or enabled torture in approving harsh interrogation methods for terror suspects, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Some Republicans have been pushing for President Bush to grant the pardons before he leaves office. But White House officials point to opinions put out by the Justice Department that supported the administration's methods, and say that pardons -- which would no doubt draw fire from congressional Democrats and other administration critics -- are unnecessary.

It's unclear whether the incoming Obama administration intends to prosecute officials from the CIA, DOJ, and other government agencies who approved the harsh methods. A spokesperson for the Obama transition team told the Journal: "No decisions about interrogation issues will be made before the full national security and legal teams are in place."

But some congressional Democrats, as well as liberal legal scholars, have called for such prosecutions, over activities including water-boarding and the NSA's warantless wiretapping.

The Associated Press reports:

The Justice Department has released hundreds of documents that it used to falsely accuse scientist Steven J. Hatfill of masterminding the 2001 anthrax attacks.

The documents were unsealed Tuesday following last week's federal court order to do so. They show the FBI seized clothing, financial records, VHS tapes, books and other papers from Hatfill's home in Frederick, Md.

Hatfill originally was named a person of interest in the anthrax attacks. But the Justice Department cleared him last summer after switching its focus to another suspect, Bruce Ivins.

Some of the court documents can be found here. We'll bring you the rest as soon as DOJ makes them available.

The New York Times and Los Angeles Times had sued to have the Hatfill documents released.

Late Update: Here are more of the documents.

The New York Times has more details about the possible continued involvement of the U.S. Attorney in the prosecution of former Alabama Democratic governor Don Siegleman, even after she had formally recused herslef form ghe case because her husband was a GOP operative who had run the gubernatorial campaign of Siegelman's opponent.

The paper reports allegations made in a sworn affidavit by a whistleblower in the office, Tamarah Grimes, about the involvement of U.S. Attorney Leura Canary. Time had reported similar claims earlier this month -- in response to which Siegelman expressed outrage in an interview with TPMmuckraker.

Says the Times:

[I]n her complaint, the Justice Department employee, Tamarah T. Grimes, cited several instances suggesting Ms. Canary maintained a close watch on the case. Ms. Grimes said a legal aide in the office reported on Mr. Siegelman's trial to Ms. Canary or her top deputy "every day, sometimes several times per day by telephone." Once, she observed Ms. Canary "frantically pacing in the executive suite" after a courtroom blowup, "pleading with someone" to get on the phone to "tell Louis he has to control his temper."

Ms. Grimes also disclosed an e-mail message written by Ms. Canary commenting on legal strategy in the case and suggesting to aides that Mr. Siegelman not be allowed to "comment on court activities in the media." Ms. Grimes, who is also in an dispute with the department related to her allegations that the Siegelman prosecution team had harrassed her, cited the affidavit of a former legal aide in the Montgomery office, Elizabeth Jane Crooks, who wrote that "the morning that the trial started, the U.S. attorney herself carried food and beverage over to the courthouse to support the 'Trial Team.' "

The Times also reports that lawyers for Siegelman, whose appeal begins next month in Atlanta court, have made new filings based on Grimes' claims.

A witness who testified against Ted Stevens has said in a letter to the judge that he falsely denied on the stand that he had an immunity deal with prosecutors in exchange for his testimony.

The witness, David Anderson, a welder who worked on the Alaska senator's home, wrote in the letter that his testimony that there was no immunity agreement "is simply not true". And he wrote that prosecutors "instructed me on how to sugar coat [the immunity deal] and get it swept under the rug during the trial."

The letter was filed today by defense lawyers.

Stevens was convicted on seven counts of having lied on his Senate disclosure forms about gifts he received from an oil-services contractor. Earlier this month, he lost his bid for re-election to the Senate.

Late Update: Anderson's letter contains more eyebrow-raising allegations than we'd first noted. He writes: "There was a contract to have me murdered issued by Bill and Mark Allen."

According to a report on the blog AlaskaDispatch, Anderson is Bill Allen's nephew, and Mark Allen is Bill Allen's son. Anderson clashed with Mark Allen, and therefore Bill Allen, over a woman. To protect his family, both from Bill Allen and from unspecified future charges, Anderson testified against Stevens, he told AlaskaDispatch's Tony Hopfinger, who has written for Bloomberg News and Newsweek.

So obviously, this news is being driven by a lot of different agendas, which we don't yet know enough to evaluate. And the specific details of the Anderson-Allen dispute aren't necessarily relevant. But the key point is that if there's compelling evidence that Anderson gave false testimony, or that prosecutors encouraged him to testify falsely or in a misleading manner, Stevens' conviction could potentially be put in doubt.

We'll keep you posted as things become clearer...

Late Late Update: DOJ has responded to Anderson's claims. AP reports:

The Justice Department responded quickly, saying the government never made any agreement of immunity for Anderson or any of his family or friends. "Mr. Anderson's statement in his November 2008 letter is not true, and the court is aware that it is not true," government lawyers said.

...

[T]he Justice Department said Anderson told two FBI agents in an August 13 meeting that he knew there was no immunity agreement and that the March affidavit was false.

The government agreed not to make him testify against family members, but "Anderson knew that there had been no agreement relative to immunity or promises of immunity by the government as to anyone," the Justice Department said.

Yesterday, Trevor Blackann, a former aide to Missouri Republicans Sen. Kit Bond and Rep. Roy Blunt, pleaded guilty to concealing thousands of dollars in illegal gifts he received from lobbyists who were part of Team Abramoff.

Exactly who were those lobbyists? Today, Rollcall fingers Todd Boulanger and James Hirni as the top suspects:

According to documents provided by the Justice Department, Blackann received the majority of gifts -- valued at more than $3,100 -- in 2003 from an individual identified only as "Lobbyist D," a close Abramoff associate.

But details provided about "Lobbyist D" match the career trajectory of Todd Boulanger, a former aide to then-Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.), who later worked for the firm Preston Gates and then Greenberg Traurig.

...

Although unnamed, details about "Lobbyist E" match those of James Hirni, a former Senate aide who at one time worked for Greenberg Traurig with both "Lobbyist D" and Abramoff.

Boulanger has long been known as a key member of Team Abramoff. In 2006, TPMmuckraker published a 2002 email he sent to fellow lobbyists, asking them to contribute to the re-election camapign of Mississippi GOP senator Thad Cochran, whose office, wrote Boulanger, had "never said 'no'" to the Choctaw Indians, a casino-owning Abramoff client.

Both Boulanger and Hirni are still in the lobbying game. Boulanger works for Cassidy and Associates, while Hirni is a "director of Republican outreach" for Wal-Mart, according to Roll Call. Neither returned the paper's calls for comment.

Perhaps ominously for both, Blackann is said by his lawyer to be cooperating with prosecutors as they seek to build other cases.

As for Bond and Blunt themselves, the office of the former said yesterday he had "no knowledge" of Blackann's ilegal activities. Blunt's office has not yet commented publicly on the matter.

Barack Obama looks likely to pick Eric Holder -- who during the Clinton administration held the number two post at Justice -- to be his next attorney general.

Under Bush, as TPMmuckraker has chronicled, the department was subjected to an unprecedented degree of politicization, and generally exhibited a striking lack of independence from the priorities of the White House -- problems for which ex AG Alberto Gonzales, who had been George Bush's personal attorney in Texas, was ultimately forced to resign.

So we've combed through Holder's record of public comments to see whether, on these crucial issues, he seems likely to continue what Bush started, or to reverse it. Here's what we found:

For one thing, unlike Gonzo -- and despite Holder's failure to stop Clinton's last-minute pardon of the financier Marc Rich, for which he's already begun receiving heat -- he doesn't seem likely to be the president's stooge.

As The American Lawyer wrote in a profile this year, Holder was independent enough that he advised then-AG Janet Reno to allow the widening of Ken Starr's investigation into the Monica Lewinsky affair -- which ultimately led to Clinton's impeachment.

And in a 2006 interview with National Journal for a story about Gonzales' performance as AG, Holder called the attorney general "the one Cabinet member who's different from all the rest." He continued: "The attorney general serves first the people, but also serves the president. There has to be a closeness, at the same time there needs to be distance."

Holder also seems less willing than his potential predecessors under Bush to take an expansive view of presidential power.

In 2004, Holder told CNN:

"If you're going to listen in on attorney/client conversations, as we did in the Clinton administration, the difference was we asked a judge to authorize it as opposed to simply saying we in the executive branch by ourselves can do this without any supervision by a judge. You also need to report to Congress on a regular basis to let them know what you're doing under the act."

Two months later, introducing (pdf) Al Gore at an American Constitution Society (ACS) discussion of "Institutionalized Dishonesty in the Bush Administration," Holder observed:

Military success and respect for civil liberties can -- and in fact, they must -- coexist. In achieving victory, we must not lose our nation's soul.

He added:

And we must also be mindful of the tactics we employ because the contemporary world, and ultimately history, will judge us only--not only by the magnitude of our inevitable victory, but also by the manner in which it was won.

And this June, in another speech at ACS, he spoke out against the Justice Department's stance on torture and the Geneva Convention:

I never thought I would see the day when a Justice Department would claim that only the most extreme infliction of pain and physical abuse constitutes torture and that acts that are merely cruel, inhuman and degrading are consistent with United States law and policy, that the Supreme Court would have to order the president of the United States to treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention, never thought that I would see that a president would act in direct defiance of federal law by authorizing warrantless NSA surveillance of American citizens. This disrespect for the rule of law is not only wrong, it is destructive in our struggle against terrorism.

Still, as Salon's Glenn Greenwald has noted, Holder hasn't always taken that position. In January, 2002 -- admittedly, during a period when 9/11-induced panic was prompting a lot of otherwise smart people to take a hard line on these questions -- he told CNN:

One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them ... Under the Geneva Convention ... you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people.

In other words, despite some blemishes, it seems likely that under Holder, DOJ will begin a much-needed shift back towards being the non-partisan, independent law enforcement agency that, until Bush, it was known as.

Yesterday we flagged a Washington Post report about the "burrowing" of Bush administration political appointees into career jobs at various departments -- most prominently Interior -- where it will be difficult for the incoming Obama administration to dislodge them.

Bush certainly didn't invent what's sometimes called the "headless nail" phenomenon, but he's taking a bit of heat for the news nonetheless. Yesterday, reports the Post in a followup, Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein wrote in a letter to the White House:

Today's report reveals that senior members of your administration are undermining your public commitment to ease the transition by reorganizing agencies at the eleventh hour and installing political appointees in key positions for which they may not be qualified," they wrote. "We respectfully urge you to stand by your public commitment to a smooth transition by directing executive agencies immediately to halt any conversions of political appointees to career positions.

And White House press secretary Dana Perino was forced to deny that there's an orchestrated effort to embed loyalists in the bureaucracy.

But there's evidence that the burrowing under Bush has been extensive, and hasn't just been confined to the administration's waning days. The Post adds:

The Government Accountability Office has long tracked such political-to-career conversions, and it reported in May 2006 that during the first four years of the Bush administration, 144 political appointments were converted to career positions. Thirty-six were at the Health and Human Services Department, 23 were at the Justice Department, 21 were at the Defense Department and 15 were at the Treasury Department.

It'd be nice to know just which Bushies have already embedded themselves in those departments. We'll see what we can find out...

To defend him against charges that he politicized DOJ hiring practices, Alberto Gonzales will have a private attorney -- on the taxpayers' dime, reports McClatchy.

The move, requested by Gonzo himself, will likely end up costing taxpayers about twice as much as a top DOJ attorney would have, according to the news service.

Gonzales is being sued by a former high-ranking Justice official, Dan Metcalfe, on behalf of a group of his law students. An internal DOJ report found that, under Gonzales, the department had favored politically conservative candidates for internships, prosecutor jobs, and immigration judgeships. The students allege that their careers were irreparably harmed as a result of being unfairly passed over for two department programs that hire law students.

A Justice Department spokesman told McClatchy the department wouldn't comment on the reasons for the approval, or on the cost to taxpayers.

And how do you like this rationale from Robert Bork Jr. -- a spokesman for Gonzales, and the son of the unsuccessful arch-conservative Supreme Court nominee -- for why Gonazles requested the private lawyer?

Gonzales, said Bork Jr., "values the work that the Department's civil attorneys do in all cases" but believes that "private counsel can often be useful where (department) officials are sued in an individual capacity, even where the suit has no substantive merit."

Election-law expert Rick Hasen picks out an interesting passage from the minority section of the Senate Judiciary Committee's just-released report into the US Attorneys firings.

Some members of the committee's Republican minority -- including senior senators like McCain pal Lindsey Graham, new NRSC chair John Cornyn, and ex-presidential candidate Sam Brownback -- strenuously disagreed with the findings of the Majority (and with an internal report produced by DOJ's Office of the Inspector General) that the White House helped engineer the firings, and that several of the dismissals were made for inappropriate political reasons.

Instead, they used the report as a chance to bang the drum on "voter fraud" one more time. But they continue to willfully confuse voter registration fraud with voter fraud -- even though numerous experts have now pointed out that there's no evidence that fraudulent voter registration forms lead to fraudulent votes being cast.

The dissenting Republicans wrote:

Perhaps the most Orwellian aspect of the Majority report is its repeated insistence that there is no vote fraud in this country that is ever worth investigating. At one point, the Majority even places scare quotes around the term, lest anyone receive the impression that the Majority believes that voter fraud could ever be a real problem. Yet during the federal elections just concluded, the American public saw numerous examples of serious attempts to commit voter fraud in this country.

Most of these incidents involved the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a group that actively promotes voter registration in many cities across the nation. ACORN tends to target areas where it believes that it can register Democratic voters, such as parks, public-assistance agencies, and liquor stores, ACORN's history is littered with claims and convictions of fraud. and generally hires part-time workers who are paid for each registered name to canvas these areas. In this election cycle, many different groups, from journalists to the GOP, strongly criticized the integrity of the organization's registration methods. As early as September, state officials reported fraudulent voter registrations submitted by ACORN, and as of October 6th, the New York Times reported that about 400,000 ACORN filings had been rejected by authorities as duplicates, incomplete, or fraudulent. After comparing their voter registration rolls, Georgia, Florida, and Ohio found 112,000 duplicate voters registered in two states, and authorities have rejected ACORN applications attempting to register such "voters" as Mickey Mouse and the Dallas Cowboys' offensive line.

Notice that the Republicans stop short of saying voter fraud was actually committed. They do say flatly, however, that faulty registration forms submitted by ACORN amount to "serious attempts" to commit voter fraud.

But they don't offer a single piece of evidence to support even this reduced charge.
Not one citation given -- most of which are to columns by conservative opinion columnist John Fund, or to posts on the conservative blog Powerline -- leads to an example that contains any evidence whatsoever of an effort to actually commit voter fraud.

It's one thing for Fund or Sean Hannity to try to muddy up these distinctions in an effort to confuse people into believing that voter fraud actually exists in significant numbers. But it's pretty shocking when Senate Republicans do so.

The Justice Department already found, in its report on the U.S. Attorney firings, that the White House engineered the firings, and that inappropriate political concerns had played in to several of the dismissals.

Still, the Senate Judiciary Committee released a report on the episode today that goes a little further. Its "Majority" (that is, Democratic) section concludes:

The evidence...shows that the list for firings was compiled with participation from the highest political ranks in the White House, including former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.

The evidence shows that senior officials were focused on the political impact of Federal prosecutions and whether Federal prosecutors were doing enough to bring partisan voter fraud and corruption cases. It is now apparent that the reasons given for these firings, including those reasons provided in sworn testimony by the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, were contrived as part of a cover-up.

In a separate section, several committee Republicans strongly disagreed with that view, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, took the opportunity to highlight allegations of voter fraud against ACORN.

The report was released to accompany contempt resolutions against Rove and White House chief of staff Josh Bolten passed by the committee last year. The two have refused to testify or provide documents to the committee as part of its investigation.

In a statement accompanying the report committee chair Pat Leahy, of Vermont, said:

The findings of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the course of its investigation into the hiring and firing of U.S. Attorneys have been echoed by the Justice Department's own internal oversight offices. Further, the White House's unsupported claims of executive privilege and immunity designed to shield the President's advisors from complying with congressional subpoenas have been rejected by the federal court.

The ACLU is today filing a suit alleging that the Bush administration has asked other countries to hold terror suspects whom the U.S. lacks the evidence to charge.

The poster boy for the case is Naji Hamdan, an American Muslim, who, reports McClatchy, has been held for nearly three months in the United Arab Emirates without charges, access to a lawyer, or contact with his family.

"If the U.S. government is responsible for this detention and we believe it is, this is clearly illegal because our government can't contract away the Constitution by enlisting the aid of other governments that do not adhere to the Constitution's requirements," an ACLU spokesperson told McClatchy.

An FBI spokesman said: "The FBI does not ask foreign nations to detain U.S. citizens on our behalf in order to circumvent their rights."

Hamdan served on the board of a Los Angeles mosque, and had originally been questioned by the FBI about possible ties to Osama Bin Laden as early as 1999. He moved with his family to the UAE in 2006, and was arrested by local law enforcement in August of this year.

Hamdan's family, which is bringing the lawsuit, says he's no friend of OBL. "Naji hates war. He hates what happened on September 11. He hates terrorism," his wife told McClatchy.

Contracting giant Blackwater has confirmed the existence of multiple federal investigations into its work in shipping weapons to Iraq, reports Congress Daily.

The North Carolina company is facing separate investigations by a grand jury in the state, and by the State Department.

But in a statement, it took issue with some details from news reports last week. "The investigations ... do not allege that the company failed to obtain licenses or failed to ensure the government was aware of its actions," it said.

Rather, it said, "[t]he investigations concern Blackwater's not properly annotating the licenses, not timely submitting required reports, and not retaining required records."

Still, it essentially admitted the most eyebrow-raising charge -- that it had shipped weapons inside sacks of dog food -- saying that this was done to prevent theft.

Separately, federal prosecutors have drafted an indictment against Blackwater guards in connection with the deadly shooting of 17 Baghdad civilians last year, though no decisions on charges have been made.

The Justice Department is denying a subpoena from House Judiciary chair John Conyers for documents relating to the prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman.

Conyers is investigating whether the 2006 prosecution on corruption charges of Siegelman, a Democrat, was politically motivated.

In a letter sent Friday to Conyers, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Keith Nelson writes that DOJ won't produce the documents in question, consistent with a department policy of not providing internal prosecution materials to Congress. Nelson makes the contorted argument that even though such documents in fact have been given to Congress in the past, that would not affect the decision on the Siegelman documents, because of supposed uncertainty about the facts of the other cases:

We do not believe that a possible departure from those policies in any given matter, the details of which may not be known or knowable at this point, requires us to set them aside in any other matter.

In response, a Judiciary Committee aide told TPMmuckraker:

Not sure when DOJ starting getting Donald Rumsfeld to write their letters, but I don't think the Committee's subpoena can be put off by some Justice Department Uncertainty Principle that refuses to answer Congressional oversight based on the unknowable nature of facts. In the end, this wrangling over oversight precedent misses the important point here - the Department's reputation is at a low ebb, and they should be working to clear away the clouds over the Siegelman case, not hunkering down and hoping they'll blow over.

At a 2002 press conference, Rumseld famously told reporters, in regard to whether Saddam Hussein had tried to pass weapons of mass destruction to terrorists:

[A]s we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

Last week, we reported on new documents that have surfaced in the Siegelman case, showing, among other things, that the U.S. Attorney on the case -- who had recused herself because her husband is a top GOP operative who had run the gubernatorial campaign of Siegelman's GOP opponent -- continued to advise prosecutors.

In an interview with TPMmuckraker, Siegelman lamented what he called "outrageous criminal conduct" on the part of the US Attorney's office and main DOJ.

Federal prosecutors have drafted an indictment against 6 guards working for Blackwater USA, who were involved in deadly shootings last year of 17 Baghdad civilians, according to the Associated Press.

But it's not yet certain that charges will be filed. AP reports:

The draft is being reviewed by senior Justice Department officials but no charging decisions have been made. A decision is not expected until at least later this month, people close to the case said.

The shootings by Blackwater guards, which witnesses described as an unprovoked attack, took place at a busy Baghdad intersection in September of last year.

Earlier this week, the company was fined by the State Department for shipping automatic weapons to Iraq without permits.

Former Alabama governor Don Siegelman says that new revelations about his prosecution amount to "outrageous criminal conduct in the US Attorney's office and the Department of Justice," and are "more frightening than anything that has come before." And he believes that his case is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of politicized prosecutions by DOJ.

Siegelman was reacting in an interview with TPMmuckraker to the news, first reported this morning by Time, that the US Attorney on his case, who had recused herself because her husband was a top GOP operative who had worked closely with Karl Rove -- and even run the 2002 campaign of Siegelman's gubernatorial opponent -- continued to advise prosecutors on the case.

At times while speaking to TPMmuckraker, Siegelman appeared to have trouble maintaining his composure. He called the news -- which came from a whistleblower in the US Attorney's office who passed on emails and other information to the House Judiciary Commitee -- "another shocking revelation in the misconduct of the US attorneys offices and the DOJ."

The news appears to contradict previous statements from DOJ on the matter. When Congress investigated the affair earlier this year, DOJ had said that the US Attorney, Leura Canary, had recused herself "before any significant decisions ... were made."

Siegelman continued: "If what [the whistleblower] says is true, it's one issue. But the fact that it was never disclosed to the defense or the judge, and then was covered up by DOJ, is a crime, even if what she said wasn't true."

He added: "At every stage of this investigation, either by lawyers or the House Judiciary Committee, DOJ has refused to turn over documents" or otherwise cooperate.

The authenticity of the key emails provided by the whistleblower has not been questioned, according to Time.

Siegelman also said he was shocked by other revelations from the whistleblower, including that one of the jurors had expressed romantic interest in an FBI agent working with prosecutors. He called it "astounding" that this hadn't been revealed to the judge and the defense.

And Siegelman, a Democrat, left no doubt that he believes that the apparent politicization of his prosecution was just one example of many such cases. "If this were isolated to just the middle district of Alabama, it would be shocking enough. But I guarantee this kind of misbehavior has been going on all over the country."

He added: "Whoever is the new Attorney General has to be strong enough to weed out the Karl Rove clones who have been embedded in US Attorneys' offices throughout the United States. If not, it is going to eat at our system for years to come."

At one point, Siegelman turned philosophical: "If I've been put through this for a reason, it's to expose the fact that this is not an isolated incident. I am prayerful that Congress will dig in and demand the truth. These folks have got to be weeded out."

New documents relating to the prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman suggest misconduct by the US attorney in the case, and appear to contradict previous statements from the Department of Justice about the matter.

The new revelations, reported by Time, are contained in a letter sent last week by House Judiciary chair John Conyers to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, based on information provided to the committee by a legal aide in the US Attorney's office in Alabama. That information includes emails written by the US Attorney, Leura Canary, showing that she continued to advise prosecutors on the case even after having recused herself because her husband was a top Alabama GOP operative who had worked closely with Karl Rove.

Here's the key excerpt from Time:

In one of Canary's e-mails, dated September 19, 2005, she forwards senior prosecutors on the Siegelman case a three-page political commentary by Siegelman. Canary highlighted a single passage which, she told her subordinates, "Ya'll need to read, because he refers to a 'survey' which allegedly shows that 67% of Alabamans believe the investigation of him to be politically motivated." Canary then suggests: "Perhaps [this is] grounds not to let [Siegelman] discuss court activities in the media!"

Prosecutors in the case seem to have followed Canary's advice. A few months later they petitioned the court to prevent Siegelman from arguing that politics had any bearing on the case against him. After trial, they persuaded the judge to use Siegelman's public statements about political bias -- like the one Canary had flagged in her e-mail -- as grounds for increasing his prison sentence. The judge's action is now one target of next month's appeal.

When Conyers' committee investigated the Siegelman matter earlier this year, DOJ had said that Canary's 2002 recusal had come "before any significant decisions ... were made."

DOJ has already conducted its own inquiry into some of the claims contained in the letter sent by Conyers, and produced a report dismissing them as inconsequential.

Siegelman's supporters and congressional Democrats have long raised suspicions that DOJ's prosecution of Siegelman, a red-state Democrat, was an example of the inappropriate politicization of the department.

Siegelman's appeal of his conviction is set to begin next month in a federal court in Atlanta.

Blackwater USA, the State Department's largest personal security contractor in Iraq, is set to be hit with a multi-million dollar fine for shipping automatic weapons to that country without the necessary permits, reports McClatchy. Some of the weapons are believed to have ended up on Iraq's black market.

The State Department has been looking into whether Blackwater employees shipped weapons hidden in shrink-wrapped pallets from the companies headquarters in North Carolina to Iraq. No criminal charges have been filed in the case.

But according to one official, the department found that Blackwater shipped 900 weapons to Iraq without the paperwork required by arms export control regulations.

Since the weapons case became public in September 2007, Blackwater has received $1.2 billion in federal contracts, by one estimate.

The company is also being investigated by the Justice Department in connection with the killing last year of 17 Iraqi civilians.

Federal prosecutors have filed charges against a senior executive with the Swiss banking giant UBS, for conspiring with fellow bankers and wealthy clients to evade U.S. taxes. The news was announced by the Department of Justice today in a press release which did not mention UBS by name.

According to the indcitment, filed in U.S. District Court in Miami, Raoul Weil, a top wealth management executive with the company, mandated that bankers under his supervision take various steps to conceal from the IRS assets worth about $20 billion, belonging to about 20,000 U.S. clients.

The Wall Street Journal adds an interesting note:

U.S. authorities are negotiating with the Swiss government to gain access to the names of UBS's American clients, a move that could puncture centuries of secrecy surrounding Swiss banking.

Via Ben Smith, a statement from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, on the leak to the Associated Press of immigration information about Obama's aunt.

Early this morning, the matter was refered (sic) to Inspector General and ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility for action. They are looking into whether there was a violation of policy in publicly disclosing individual case information.

We also learned earlier today that internal Justice Department investigators are looking into the leaking of information, earlier this month, about a nationwide FBI probe of ACORN.

To be clear, though ICE appears to be the most likely source of the leak about Obama's aunt, we don't know with 100 percent certainty that that's where it came from. The Associated Press attributed its report to two sources, "one of them a federal law enforcment official." According to Dan Kowalski, an immigration law expert and the editor of the the online newsletter, Benders Immigration Bulletin,, the information would have been available to people at several government agencies, both at the Department of Homeland Security (of which ICE is a part) and the Department of Justice, which would have an enforcement role in immigration proceedings.