Can the Department of Justice Be Trusted?
How can Gonzales be Trusted when Gonzales is a Target?
FROM:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=995236&mesg_id=1002147Were George W. Bush, Alberto Gonzales, Bradford Berenson, Karl Rove, and/or Susan Ralston involved in quashing investigation of fellow Bush team member, Jack Abramoff?
Published on Saturday, February 4, 2006 by The Nation
Can Justice Be Trusted? by Ari Berman
Now that Jack Abramoff's dealings with members of Congress have drawn criminal indictments, the disgraced lobbyist's ties to the Bush Administration are starting to get attention........... Little notice has been paid, however, to the Justice Department, charged with prosecuting Abramoff. Evidence has emerged that the department played an active role in shutting down an investigation of Abramoff's dubious lobbying activities in Guam in November 2002. The story raises questions about whether Justice can be trusted with this historic investigation--and whether top White House officials actively abetted Abramoff's shady dealings as early as 2001. ....
......At the time Abramoff, a former member of George W. Bush's transition team, was a $750-an-hour lobbyist with access to the highest levels of the Republican Party........"Abramoff claimed he had a top political guy at DOJ he could go to ..." says a source
...strategy was "... to get Republicans to go to DOJ and the White House and say, Why have you not replaced that Democrat who's been acting US Attorney?"
Black contacted the Public Integrity Section, the unit currently heading the department's Abramoff task force,...Justice forwarded the information to the Deputy Attorney General's office and the Office of Legal Policy (OLP)...
Sources close to the probe say the information was likely passed on to then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who worked closely with Justice on such matters. "Those heads of OLP who are pretty well connected deal directly with the White House counsel," says Lee Casey, a former OLP aide under Reagan and Bush I. (Black declined to comment and Justice spokesman Bryan Sierra refused to provide details about an "ongoing criminal investigation.")
...In an e-mail dated October 1, 2001, Abramoff told ... Ashcroft's chief of staff, David Ayres, whom he hosted at a Washington Redskins Abramoff mentioned an upcoming meeting with Ashcroft and another meeting, at a pickup basketball game, between the Attorney General and an Ashcroft aide who'd become an Abramoff staffer. "We'll hope that higher ups will take some time to squash this on their own," Abramoff wrote. Sure enough, the report never came out and Justice demoted its author, regional security specialist Robert Meissner.....
Black convened a grand jury, which subpoenaed the Abramoff contract ... The next day the Bush Administration announced that Black would be replaced as US Attorney and demoted him to Assistant US Attorney, after twelve years on the job. ... "Fred was removed because he asked to indict Abramoff," says one of Black's colleagues at Justice ...
.....At the time of Black's demotion, former Abramoff aide Susan Ralston was working as a top assistant to Rove ......Black's investigation into Abramoff's activities was forceably halted. Reportedly, the FBI and the DOJ Inspector General have begun looking into Black's demotion. ...
More broadly, how can Justice be trusted to investigate a matter in which it is so deeply implicated? ....Bush nominated ... Public Integrity Section head, Noel Hillman, to a federal judgeship in New Jersey and named a temporary replacement mid-investigation. Justice can prosecute the case without any political pressure "as long as the targets are members of Congress," says former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder. "If, however, you start to develop ties between Congress, Abramoff and people in the White House, it becomes problematic, especially from an appearance perspective. Because of the Deputy Attorney General's and the Attorney General's ties to the President, the need for an outside counsel becomes greater."
Otherwise, how can the public be sure that the President's man, Alberto Gonzales, will conduct an honest, thorough investigation of Abramoff when the targets might include his top deputies, his former White House colleagues, his predecessor, his boss--indeed, himself?
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