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Banned
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Has The US DOJ, Itself been Politicized into a Criminal Enterprise?
A year ago, we posted about the fact that president Bush had made the controversial appointment of Alice Fisher, an attorney with no criminal courtroom experience, to head the criminal division of US DOJ:
From the google archive:
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=3&gl=us
There was suspicion that Alice Fisher was installed at DOJ to obstruct the criminal investigation of the criminal political corruption associated with the lobbying activities of Jack Abramoff, especially since at least two lead prosecutors of Abramoff were promoted "away" from their positions at DOJ.
The misleading statements recently of Alberto Gonzales, and the resignations of his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, and his damning testimony about Gonzales and the firing of at least 8 US Attorneys....so far....without credible cause, along with the resignation of Gonzales key aid, Monica Goodling and the cloud of her refusal to testify to a senate committee, and her hiring and promotions, in view of her alumnus status from tele-evangelist Pat Robertson's Regency University....she was hired by the Bush installed OPM head, Kay Coles who had been dean of Regency U's government school, along with 150 other Regency grads....flooding the DOJ and other executive branch positions with grads from this academically mediocre "bible college", presumably at the exclusion of more qualified candidates graduated from much more academically superior, universities....provide a background for the news released by the DOJ, yesterday:
Quote:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/013887.php
(April 28, 2007 -- 12:17 PM EDT)
To follow up on the post below about the Attorney General Awards, DOJ's highest honor, I couldn't help but notice that one of the recipients of last year's <a href="http://www.justice.gov/jmd/ps/AGAwardProgram508.pdf">Attorney General Award for Fraud Prevention</a> was Robert E. Coughlin, II.
Coughlin was the chief of staff to the head of DOJ's criminal division until his quiet resignation earlier this month, first reported yesterday, allegedly because he is facing scrutiny in the Jack Abramoff investigation.
The award "recognizes exceptional dedication and effort to prevent, investigate, and prosecute fraud and white collar crimes." Coughlin was part of a team honored for its work on post-Hurricane Katrina fraud.
In September, Coughlin was honored for his work on fraud and white collar crime. By the following April, he was out because of his alleged connections to the one of the largest white collar crime investigations in DOJ's history. Only in the Gonzales Justice Department.
-- David Kurtz
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Quote:
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/162654.html
Justice official resigns; tied to probe?
He's a longtime friend of a former Doolittle aide who's linked to Abramoff.
By Marisa Taylor and David Whitney -
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, April 28, 2007
WASHINGTON -- A senior Justice Department official with ties to a former aide to Rep. John Doolittle has resigned after coming under scrutiny in the department's expanding investigation of disgraced superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to a Justice Department official with knowledge of the case.
Making the situation more awkward for the embattled department, the official, Robert E. Coughlin II, was deputy chief of staff for the criminal division, which is overseeing the department's probe of Abramoff.
He stepped down effective April 6 as investigators in Coughlin's own division ratcheted up their investigation of lobbyist Kevin Ring, Coughlin's longtime friend, a key associate of Abramoff and former legislative director to Doolittle, R-Roseville. Ring resigned his lobbying job on April 13, the same day FBI agents raided Doolittle's Virginia home seeking records from his wife's business in connection with the Abramoff matter.
Ring typically served as liaison with Doolittle for several Abramoff clients. In one e-mail, released in connection with a Senate investigation last year, Ring discussed the possibility of Doolittle's wife taking a job for an Abramoff charity in 2000. The position never materialized, and the Doolittles have said they have no recollection of the matter.
When contacted at his home in Washington, Coughlin said he resigned voluntarily because he was relocating to Texas. "I was not asked to resign," he said in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers. "It's important to me that it's made clear that I left voluntarily." He said he couldn't comment on the Abramoff investigation, nor on whether he has a job lined up in Texas. He referred all other questions to friend Michael Horowitz.
Horowitz, a criminal defense attorney and former Justice Department official and public corruption prosecutor, did not respond to questions, including about whether he is representing Coughlin.
Coughlin also would not say whether he had hired a lawyer.
McClatchy's source at the Justice Department asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the case.
Coughlin appears to be the first Justice Department official to come under scrutiny in the wide-ranging probe that has implicated a veteran congressman, a deputy Cabinet secretary, a White House aide and eight others. Abramoff has pleaded guilty to three counts in the corruption probe and could face up to 11 years in prison.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to respond to any questions about the Abramoff investigation because it is still ongoing.
Spokesman Bryan Sierra, however, confirmed Coughlin had resigned. He also said Coughlin had recused himself from the Abramoff investigation.
The disclosure, nevertheless, was another blow to a Justice Department already struggling to recover from the controversy over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Democrats and a number of Republicans have criticized Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for his handling of the ousters, which critics charge were politically motivated.
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Background:
Quote:
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:...lnk&cd=3&gl=us.......he Marianas' lobbying paid off — it fended off proposals in 2001 to extend the U.S. minimum wage to island workers and gained at least $2 million more in federal aid from the administration.
Abramoff's team bragged to the cash-strapped Marianas government that the taxpayer money would cover its lobbying bill: "We believe that this additional funding — along with other funds we expect to secure by the end of the year — will make clear to even our biggest critics that we pay for ourselves," Abramoff teammate Kevin Ring wrote in October 2001, copying in Abramoff.
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Quote:
http://lippard.blogspot.com/2007/04/...llions-of.html
CREW points out there are millions of missing White House emails
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington points out that there are millions of emails missing from the White House servers (the official ones, not the Republican National Committee ones):
Bush Administration Practice: In the wake of the scandals surrounding Jack Abramoff and the fired U.S. Attorneys, emails were released showing that top White House staffers routinely used Republican National Committee (RNC) email accounts to conduct official business. <b>For example, J. Scott Jennings, White House Deputy Political Director, used an RNC account to communicate with the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales regarding the appointments of new U.S. Attorneys.</b> Similarly, Susan Ralston, a former aide to Karl Rove, used RNC email accounts to communicate with Abramoff about appointments to the Department of the Interior.
PRA Violations: 1) The administration failed to implement adequate record-keeping systems to archive presidential email records; 2) two confidential sources independently informed CREW that the administration abandoned a plan to recover more than five million missing emails; 3) White House staff used outside email accounts to conduct presidential business, ensuring that emails were not adequately preserved. <b>In fact, former Abramoff associate Kevin Ring said in an email to Abramoff that Ralston had told him not to send emails to her official White House account "because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc."....</b>
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In addition to the news that DOJ's Deputy Chief Criminal Division Attorney Robert Coughlin was a close friend of former Rep. Doolittle COS Kevin Ring...who was a close associate of Jack Abramoff, Kevin Ring was connected to Gonzales predecessor, John Ashcroft, nine years ago:
Quote:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001052.php
Abramoff Had Access to DoJ, Ashcroft
By Paul Kiel - July 5, 2006, 1:26 PM
"John Ashcroft" is a name that doesn't come up very often in the Jack Abramoff mucky muck. But it should.
The former Attorney General and his staff had extraordinary ties to Abramoff and his team, as numerous emails and the recent report out from the Justice Department Inspector General make clear.
With Ashcroft, as with so many other power players, Abramoff gained access by hiring someone who already had it. It was former Ashcroft aide Kevin Ring, who joined his firm in 2000. Ring had been Ashcroft's counsel when he was a Senator on the Judiciary Committee.
After Ring left Ashcroft's office, the two stayed in close contact. An Abramoff email shows that the two played basketball together while Ring was with Abramoff (let the eagle soar!). And you can see Ring graciously inviting Ashcroft's staff to bask in the splendor of Abramoff's MCI Center skybox in this email obtained by TPM. In late September of 2001, Abramoff learned of a classified report on the Northern Marianas from Ashcroft's Chief of Staff, who was in Abramoff's box at the FedEx Field.
That access came in handy. Abramoff used it when he set out to "get rid of Fred Black," the pesky US Attorney for Guam and the Northern Marianas. In March of 2002, Abramoff dispatched Ring to work his insider connections with Ashcroft's office to find out how Black could be booted. Another Abramoff aide, Tony Rudy, worked contacts at the DoJ and White House as well.
The recent IG report also disclosed that Abramoff's buddy Ken Mehlman in the White House's Office of Political Affairs made an effort to keep Abramoff up to date on issues related to his client. Earlier, we learned that Mehlman had killed the nomination of one Interior Department official, and in this case he'd assigned the underling dealing with Guam and Marianas to reach out to Abramoff to make sure that he was happy with the US Attorney nominations.
So at one point - but too late for Abramoff to act on it - Mehlman's staffer, Leonard Rodriguez, called up Abramoff to give him the message that he should "feel free to contact me directly for any requests from Guam."
This access, both to Ashcroft and Mehlman, didn't turn out to be needed in the case of Fred Black. But they would have come in handy in the fall of 2002 when the Departments of Justice and Interior were on the brink of acting on a DoJ report on the Marianas. The report said the lax immigration standards on the islands was a national security threat and recommended federal intervention - a nightmare for Abramoff's garment industry clients, whose business depended on immigrant labor.
For some reason, the report never made it to Congress, where it would surely have been acted on.
That's up next...
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Quote:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006635.php
<h2 class="date"> <a name="006635"></a> (September 27, 2005 -- 12:16 AM EDT // <i><a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006635.php">link</a></i>)</h2>
<p><span class="smallcaps">There is a</span> rather cryptic <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/politics/27lobby.html?hp&ex=1127793600&en=ff0ff80fa464904e&ei=5094&partner=homepage">article</a> in tomorrow's <em>New York Times</em> about Jack Abramoff's first brush with the law back in 2002 and how he got <em>unbrushed</em>. </p>
<p>This is the case in late 2002, when the Acting US Attorney in Guam <a href="http://auctionhouse.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/8/7/12243/56304">opened a criminal probe</a> into Jack Abramoff's lobbying activities in the US Pacific island protectorate. Yet days after federal prosecutor Frederick A. Black notified the Justice Department's Public Integrity section of his inquiry into Abramoff, he was demoted. And his new bosses barred him from pursuing any other public corruption cases. That brought the entire Abramoff investigation to halt.</p>
<p>Administration officials argue there was nothing out of the ordinary with an acting US Attorney being replaced by a permanent apppointee. But Black had been the 'Acting' US Attorney in Guam for <em>twelve years</em>. So that explanation seems rather weak.</p>
<p>The news in the article is that FBI and DOJ IG personnel have been investigating just what or who might have been behind Black's timely demotion.</p>
<p>Former Attorney General Ashcroft comes in for some discussion, in part because Abramoff had apparently boasted of his close ties to the former AG and his staff at the Justice Department. Yet "a spokesman for Mr. Ashcroft," reports the <em>Times</em>, "said the former attorney general and his aides at the Justice Department had done nothing to assist Mr. Abramoff and his clients and had had no significant contact with him."</p>
<p>Now, it seems to me that Abramoff and Ashcroft must have been buddies on at least some level, because there's <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/ashcroft.abramoff.skybox.html">this heretofore unpublished email exchange</a> (just added to the TPM Document Collection) sitting on my desk, in which their staffers are hashing out which date Ashcroft, his wife and his staff could enjoy the pleasures of the Abramoff skybox at DC's MCI Center in late 2000. </p>
<p>In the exchange, Abramoff's Kevin Ring hashes out possible dates with Ashcroft's Andy Beach. Ring later forwards the exchange on to Susan Ralston, Abramoff's <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/ralston.memo.4202000.html">skybox gatekeeper</a>, for approval. And I can't help but notice the February 2nd, 2001 piece in the St. Louis <em>Post-Dispatch</em>, which notes that Ashcroft brought Beach with him to the Justice Department. Presumably, two years later, Beach was still there as Ashcroft's scheduler at Justice Department. </p>
<p>So who knows? Maybe there was just some line of communication after all.</p>
<p>Perhaps even more interesting, though, is a possibility that goes unmentioned in Tuesday's <em>Times</em> piece: Karl Rove. </p>
<p>The <em>Los Angeles Times</em> article on the Guam story from August 7th, 2005 (<a href="http://auctionhouse.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/8/7/12243/56304">discussed here</a> and reproduced <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/08/08/bush_removal_ended_guam_investigation/">here</a> in the <em>Globe</em>) notes that Black's replacement, Leonardo Rapadas, apparently came at the behest of none other than Karl Rove. </p>
<p>Wrote the <em>Times</em> ...</p>
<blockquote>His replacement, Leonardo Rapadas, was confirmed in May 2003 without any debate. Rapadas had been recommended for the job by the Guam Republican Party. Fred Radewagen, a lobbyist who had been under contract to the Gutierrez administration, said he carried that recommendation to top Bush aide Karl Rove in early 2003.</blockquote>
<p>It's probably worth mentioning that at the point Black got the ax in November 2002 and was replaced by the party-backed Rapadas, the aforementioned Ralston was working as Rove's executive assistant.</p>
<p>Small world.</p>
<div class="posted">-- Josh Marshall
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I quote Josh Marshall's talkingpointsmemo.com and tpmmuckraker.com because the larger news media, aka the "liberal" media....cannot seem to investigate much of this.
Now we know that DOJ sat on Robert Couhglin's resignation from April 6, until
yesterday, after 5:00pm....on a friday....so the fewest would notice the release of the news.
Is it any wonder that the indictments and prosecutions of those related to the crimes of Jack Abramoff and Randy Cunningham, to name just two corrupt republicans, seem to unfold at a snail's pace, if it all? We even see the Attorney General and his staff, and the White House staff, using private RNC email addresses to mask their official activities as they blend them with political and alleged criminal activity.
Some here have posted on other threads that congressional investigation of the DOJ and the rest of the administration is a "waste of time and money".
Don't some of you agree that there is still too little investigation, not that there is too much? |