U.S. Attorneys

Feinstein Questions Mukasey on Disbanding of LA Public Corruption Unit

Paul Kiel | March 27, 2008, 12:41PM

Last week, the U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles disbanded his office's public corruption unit.

Current and former prosecutors from the office said that the move will hurt the office's ability to take on crooked pols (while LA USA Thomas O'Brien has argued the opposite). We also posted an email from a former prosecutor in the office saying that O'Brien may have handled the move badly (by reportedly threatening lawyers in the unit to stay quiet about the move), but he's "no Rachel Paulose."

Given that the major role that the LA office plays, however, (including its handling of the investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)). Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wants some answers about the move. So yesterday she sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey -- who, perhaps coincidentally, is giving a speech today in California about the Department's public corruption efforts.

You can read the letter in full below.

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Michael Mukasey

Mukasey to Tout DoJ Public Corruption Efforts

Paul Kiel | March 26, 2008, 5:58PM

Maybe it's a coincidence. But a little more than a week after the U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles created a stir by disbanding his office's public corruption unit, Attorney General Michael Mukasey will be giving a speech in California "to highlight the Department's efforts to investigate and prosecute public corruption" according to a press release.

The speech, sponsored by the Commonwealth Club, will be given at the Intercontinental Hotel Grand Ballroom in San Francisco.

So if last week's move sent a message to California politicians, it seems Mukasey is striving to send the opposite one.

U.S. Attorneys

Judge Sets Schedule for House Contempt Suit

Paul Kiel | March 25, 2008, 11:46AM

We knew that the House's lawsuit against White House officials would take awhile. And it turns out that it'll be June, at the earliest, before a judge makes his first decision in the House's suit against Harriet Miers and White House chief of staff Josh Bolten.

That relatively rapid pace (for the courts, at least) is the result of the House pushing for quicker resolution of some of the White House's more expansive claims of executive privilege. The court will decide first whether administration lawyers are right when they say that Miers didn't even need to show up in response to the House Judiciary Committee's subpoena and that both Bolten and Miers didn't even need to indicate what sort of documents the White House were claiming privilege for. Thornier issues (e.g. whether certain conversations that do not involve the president are covered by executive privilege, etc.) would be dealt with later. The House has sought this speedier resolution with the hope that it would mean they'd actually get to hear from Miers and see some documents from Bolten before the close of the Bush administration.

Last Friday, the judge set a schedule for both sides to submit motions and set a hearing for June 23rd when the House's general counsel and Justice Department lawyers will argue before the judge. But whichever way the judge eventually rules, the decision would likely be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court, meaning that regardless of the House's desire for a speedy resolution, the case is bound to spend a long time in the courts before Congressional investigators see any of its fruits.

U.S. Attorneys

Former AUSA Gives Another Take on Disbanding of LA Public Corruption Unit

Paul Kiel | March 21, 2008, 4:08PM

We've posted a couple of times this week on the move by U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles Thomas O'Brien's decision to disband the public corruption unit in that office. On Monday, we quoted a former prosecutor in the unit on his view that the move "sends a message" to politicians that they don't need to be so careful. And yesterday, we relayed The Los Angeles Times' reporting on the move, which anonymously quoted a number of the prosecutors in the office who said that O'Brien had threatened them with retaliation if they publicly disputed the move.

But TPM Reader M thinks that O'Brien is getting a bum rap:

I recently left the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles for private practice, and I've followed the recent events in the office closely and talked to several folks who were at the meeting in question. I'm no loyal Bushie, and I've been outraged by what this administration has done to the U.S. Attorney's Office as an institution and experienced firsthand how hard it is to be a prosecutor in this administration. But Tom O'Brien is no Rachel Paulose. He's a career prosecutor and one of the best trial attorneys the office has seen in years. Yes, he's a Republican, but he was backed strongly by both Democratic senators Boxer and Feinstein for a job that most people figured was too radioactive to get Senate approval for anyone in the wake of the U.S. Attorney's scandal. O'Brien also done more to fix the budget problems, to boost morale, and enforce accountability in the office than any U.S. Attorney in LA in recent memory.

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U.S. Attorneys

LAT: USA Threatened Corruption Prosecutors to Stay Silent

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2008, 2:51PM

Earlier this week, we reported on the decision by U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles Thomas O'Brien to disband the office's public corruption unit. The official line from O'Brien was that disbanding the 17-lawyer unit would actually boost the number of public corruption investigations, because other units would now have the opportunity to take on such cases. The was a line of reasoning with which a former prosecutor from that office disagreed.

And not surprisingly, the current lawyers there don't think much of that either. But, reports The Los Angeles Times, O'Brien warned them not to dispute that publicly:

[I]n interviews with The Times, several members of the disbanded unit challenged that explanation, saying the move was intended to punish lawyers for a perceived failure to produce and for bad-mouthing their boss, U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien.

The lawyers described a meeting last week in which an angry O'Brien derided attorneys in the office for working too few hours, filing too few cases and for speaking ill of him to subordinates.

They said O'Brien also threatened to tarnish their reputations if they challenged the official explanation for the unit's dismantling in conversations with reporters. Members of the unit contacted by The Times either spoke on the condition that they not be named or declined to comment. Several said they wanted to talk about the situation but feared reprisals if they did so.

Lawyers from that office also say that O'Brien's move might lead to an increase in the number of prosecutions, but they will be more in the mold of "filings against postal employees stealing mail and other relatively minor cases but 'don't look for any long, drawn-out City Hall corruption cases.'"

The misleading spin doesn't end there, however. The spokesman for the office told the Times that the Los Angeles' office was completely unique -- that no other office in the country has an entire section of lawyers specializing in public corruption cases.

That's not true. The public integrity unit in Manhattan's U.S. Attorney Office is famously handling now-ex-Gov. Elliot Spitzer's (D) entanglement with the Emperor's Club prostitution ring, and U.S. Attorney for Chicago Patrick Fitzgerald has a public corruption section in his office -- an office that's handled the wide-ranging investigation into the administration of Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D).

Actually, given those units' recent success in making the lives of governors miserable, you can bet that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) isn't too upset about this move.

U.S. Attorneys

House Pushes for Quick Handling of Contempt Suit

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2008, 12:07PM

A quick update on the House's lawsuit against Harriet Miers and White House chief of staff Josh Bolten. From The Politico:

The House General Counsel's Office, which is representing the Judiciary Committee in a civil contempt lawsuit against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, has asked a federal judge to set up an expedited schedule to resolve portions of the case, a schedule that would require a ruling by this summer, according to court documents filed today.

The Justice Department, which is representing Bolten and Miers in the case, countered that the only reason the Judiciary Committee is seeking a speedy determination of the case is so that it "recommence prior to Congress' August recess" its investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. The Justice Department wants a slower review of the contempt case, and it is already warning that it may appeal any ruling that goes against it.

What the House wants is to just settle the White House's more expansive claims of privilege -- namely, that Miers didn't even need to show up in response to the House Judiciary Committee's subpoena and that both Bolten and Miers didn't even need to indicate what sort of documents the White House were claiming privilege for.

A private conference is scheduled for tomorrow. The judge's decision will likely indicate whether the House has any hope of hearing any actual testimony from Miers or seeing any documents from Bolten during the Bush administration.

U.S. Attorneys

Former Prosecutor: Disbanding LA USA Public Corruption Unit "Sends A Message"

Paul Kiel | March 18, 2008, 12:28PM

Yesterday on TPM, Josh noted a report (sub. req.) in The Recorder, a California legal news publication, that the U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles, Thomas O'Brien, had disbanded the office's public integrity unit.

The 17 attorneys in that section of the office "will be redistributed among the major fraud and organized crime sections, which now will have a mandate to battle corruption," the Recorder reported. The office's spokesman tried to put as bright a face on it as possible, saying "Our view is that it's a significant enhancement of the public corruption unit. We now have over 70 lawyers who essentially will be able to step up to the plate."

That's clearly some weak spin. But I asked a former prosecutor from the office's public integrity unit to give me a sense of what this means.

That former prosecutor didn't think the move was "politically motivated," instead attributing the move to a desire to improve the office's statistics. U.S. attorneys frequently experience pressure to increase the number of prosecutions as evidence of performance. Remember that Justice Department officials used former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's lower immigration case numbers as justification for her firing (ignoring her office's concentration on busting illegal immigration rings). "Public corruption cases are very difficult and very time consuming," the former prosecutor explained. "A lot of that doesn't result in a statistic."

Of course, that doesn't mean that the cases don't have a disproportionate impact. "The fact of an investigation into the earmark process [i.e. the Duke Cunningham scandal and by extension the investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)]," really had a huge impact in opening up debate of how that process has been corrupted by money. That doesn't happen if you're not looking at it every day.

"My concern is the message that it sends," the lawyer continued. "The existence of the section, the fact that talented, smart, aggressive prosecutors are looking at cases, sends a message to public officials that they need to be careful." Now another message has been sent.

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U.S. Attorneys

House Panel Files Suit against White House

Paul Kiel | March 10, 2008, 11:37AM

And we're on to the next step of the Congress v. White House subpoena battle.

First, the House found Harriet Miers and White House chief of staff Josh Bolten in contempt for refusing to respond to House Judiciary Committee subpoenas from the U.S. attorney firings investigation. Then, the Justice Department, as Attorney General Mukasey had warned it would, refused to convene a grand jury and rebuffed the criminal referral. And now we're on to step three: a lawsuit against the administration to enforce the subpoenas.

As Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) says, "It is extremely rare that Congress must litigate in order to enforce subpoenas and no compromise can be reached. Unfortunately, this Administration simply will not negotiate towards a compromise resolution so we must proceed."

He looks forward to "a quick and favorable ruling by the Court, so that we can complete our investigation." The expectation on all sides, though, is that this will likely drag on for many months.

We'll keep you updated as the case moves forward.

You can read the 36-page complaint here (pdf).

U.S. Attorneys

Iglesias: Bush Buddy USA Said Firings Were "Political"

Paul Kiel | March 7, 2008, 12:32PM

It's hard to think back to that time when it was arguable that administration officials were telling the truth when they protested that the U.S. attorneys had been fired for "performance" reasons.

That seems pretty much resolved now. All of the main players: Alberto Gonzales, his deputy Paul McNulty, Kyle Sampson, Monica Goodling, Sarah Taylor, et al. are all gone. But before it all went kablooey, before the firings even became public, former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias says that he learned what it eventually took a raging scandal to publicly reveal.

The disclosure comes from Iglesias' book, "In Justice," which is due out in June. In the passage, the details of which were first reported last night by McClatchy, Iglesias writes of a conversation he had with U.S. Attorney for San Antonio Johnny Sutton shortly after he'd been asked to resign. Iglesias thought that Sutton, a longtime friend of Bush's who was the chairman of the committee of U.S. attorneys that advised the attorney general, could help him out. It turned out, no. Here it is:

“I’ve got a sense this is a done deal, David,” he flatly told me after listening to my story.

“Based on what?” I asked, swallowing hard. Maybe I should have just hung up then. It was clear from the guarded tone of his voice that he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, help me.

“Look,” he said, in the same matter-of-fact manner. “I’ve been around awhile. This is political. If I were you, I’d just go quietly.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing: a U.S. Attorney all but admitting that a colleague was being hung out to dry for reasons that had nothing to do with performance or professionalism. “How do you know?” was all I could ask.

There was long silence on the other end. “I saw your name,” he said at last, in a barely audible voice.

It took a minute for the implications to sink in. “Where?” I finally asked. “You mean, there’s some sort of list?”

“I can’t speak to that,” he answered blandly, and I knew, at that moment, that it was useless to continue.

It's not clear, exactly, what Sutton meant, and his office didn't return our call. At the very least, he meant that it wasn't worth Iglesias trying to contest the firing on the merits, since there weren't any (despite what Justice Department officials later told Congress).

We'll have more later from the book.

Michael Mukasey

Mukasey's Paradox

Paul Kiel | March 4, 2008, 6:17PM

Jonathan Turley, professor of law at George Washington, writing today in The Los Angeles Times:

The recent decisions of Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey to block any prosecution of Bush administration officials for contempt and to block any criminal investigation of torture led to a chorus of criticism. Many view the decisions as raw examples of political manipulation of the legal process and overt cronyism. I must confess that I was one of those crying foul until I suddenly realized that there was something profound, even beautiful, in Mukasey's action.

In his twisting of legal principles, the attorney general has succeeded in creating a perfect paradox. Under Mukasey's Paradox, lawyers cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of a president -- and a president cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers....

When reduced to its purest form, Mukasey's Paradox is that government officials cannot violate the law -- but that because executive privilege is also a law, it's sometimes necessary to violate the law in order to uphold the law.

U.S. Attorneys

House Lawsuit against White House Expected This Month

Paul Kiel | March 4, 2008, 12:21PM

As expected, Attorney General Michael Mukasey gave the House the legal finger on Friday in response to a criminal referral for White House aides' contempt of Congress. Think of that what you will, the House has been forced on to Plan B, a civil suit against the White House.

Roll Call (sub. req.) reports it should be coming soon:

House Democrats said a civil lawsuit could be filed as early as this month that challenges the Bush administration’s claims of executive privilege in curtailing aides from testifying on Capitol Hill….

According to Democratic sources, staff is working expeditiously to finalize the lawsuit, which is expected to be filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia before the House recesses for two weeks on March 14.

The general counsel, which will file the lawsuit on behalf of the House Judiciary Committee, is expected to urge the federal court to rule on the legitimacy of the Bush administration’s claims that executive privilege protects conversations between Miers and Bolten and the president. The court also could compel both individuals to testify before the House committee.

Michael Mukasey

Mukasey Rebuffs Contempt Referrals, House to Head to Court

Paul Kiel | March 1, 2008, 10:01AM

No surprise here. From The Washington Post:

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey refused yesterday to refer two new House contempt citations to a federal grand jury, saying the White House aides involved in the case cannot be prosecuted because they were following legal advice from the Justice Department.

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Mukasey said the refusal by White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet E. Miers to comply with congressional subpoenas "did not constitute a crime."

So now it's on to court, where we'll have the novel situation of the House Judiciary Committee suing the White House.