No One Would Stop Them

For over 16 months now, our blog has posted stories about the Rove Republican Racket, the web of political operatives headed by Karl Rove that turned the U.S. Department of Justice into a political arm of the Republican Party.

Using the dishonest "Honest Services" crime to lock away Democrats and other political opponents, the Rove-Bush-Cheney Administration's DOJ hacks consistently engaged in prosecutorial misconduct or other unsavory practices to bring fear and intimidation into the political process.Some of those practices backfired.

Now the mainstream media are picking it up.

Titled "Judicial System Takes a Hit," Michael Hiltzik, a Los Angeles Times business columnist, (pictured) wrote a piece over the weekend about the prosecutorial misconduct in the Broadcom back-dating case, which was staged in the heart of Republican country: Orange County, California.

The  judge in the case chastised the prosecutors for a "shameful campaign" to intimidate witnesses and obtain unjustified convictions. 

Hiltzik's column has a revealing quote from a legal expert on why the renegade Republican prosecutors have consistently broken the rules to jail opponents:

"In the post- 9/11 years, a lot of prosecutors got emboldened to go as far as they could and play as dirty as they could, figuring that no one would stop them," Bennett Gershman of Pace University law school, the author of a legal text on prosecutorial misconduct, told me. "Judges seem to have become emboldened by what they see the prosecutors doing."

 Amen, Brother Gershman!

Raising the White Flag in California

We hope all our readers had a great Memorial Day Weekend. We were at Dewey Beach, the nation's summer capital, when this news broke on Saturday.

The Rove Republican Racket raised a white flag on a story we've been following since last year.

The Associated Press reports:

Federal prosecutors said Friday they won't appeal the dismissal of criminal charges against the founders of high-tech chipmaker Broadcom, ending an embarrassing chapter for the government during which a judge blasted prosecutors for "shameful" misconduct and a lack of evidence. The government decided not to appeal the cases against Henry T. Nicholas III and Henry Samueli, U.S. attorney's spokesman Thom Mrozek said. Prosecutors also withdrew their appeal of U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney's dismissal of former Broadcom human resources director Nancy Tullos' guilty plea to obstruction of justice. The announcement wipes away the last vestiges of a massive and high-profile criminal and civil prosecution of Broadcom's top leadership on allegations of stock option backdating that fell apart under judicial scrutiny.

Won't Let it Die in California

The Rove Republican Racket won't let it die.

The charges against executives of Broadcom were tossed out by a federal judge in December. As we reported then, federal prosecutors had leaked information to the media, which led to the stunning acquittal of the charges against Henry Samueli, the co-founder of Broadcom. A few day later, charges against other Broadcom executives were dropped due to a "shameful" campaign by federal prosecutors to intimidate witnesses and obtain unjustified convictions.

The federal prosecutors were slammed hard, but yet the Rove Republicans won't let it die.

 City News Service reports this week:

Federal prosecutors have asked to extend the deadline for a decision whether to appeal the dismissal of stock-option backdating cases against Broadcom co-founders Henry Nicholas III and Henry Samueli, a U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman said today. The prosecutors filed their motion Friday to move the deadline for filing an appeal from May 10 to about June 10, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Mrozek said he did not know if the motion was granted.

We think this is an excellent example of federal prosecutors who envy the successful. What a waste of taxpayer's money.

Envy of the Successful

Many U.S. Attorneys of the Rove-Cheney-Bush-era cannot handle people (particularly Democrats) who just happen to be smarter, more successful, or wealthier than them.

Some of the most high profile criminal prosecutions during the Rove years were against successful individuals ranging from technology gurus to fundraising mavericks to internationally recognized trial attorneys.

But the Rove Republican Racket lost a big fish, a California billionaire who they smeared with false drug accusations.

Forbes Magazine's Global Wealth Editor, Matthew Miller, writes:

Vindication has come for Henry Nicholas. After more than a year of nasty accusations, the Broadcom co-founder is a free man. And he doesn't have to go to trial to clear his name.  This is a shocking turn of events for Nicholas, considering the traction two indictments levied against him in federal court in 2008 got with the media. The indictments, which made him out to be a hooker-loving, drugged-up billionaire who dabbled in securities fraud, essentially cemented his image as a dirty guy--or at least someone who couldn't handle success.

But [two weeks ago] federal prosecutors asked judge Cormac J. Carney to dismiss a 4-count indictment that charges Nicholas with drug conspiracy. This request for dismissal came a few weeks after judge Carney threw out charges on 21 counts of options backdating and securities fraud against Nicholas and former Broadcom chief financial officer William Ruehle.

The drug charges were the centerpiece of a well-orchestrated plan to smear Nicholas. As his lawyer's told Miller last fall:

Nicholas and his lawyers were emphatic that the drug indictment, which suggested Nicholas enjoyed plying Broadcom customers with drinks spiked with Ecstasy and built a series of secret rooms underneath his Laguna Hills mansion to party in, was filed only to stir up attention on a weaker options indictment. "The prosecutors have borrowed a page from the plaintiff's attorneys' playbook and have peppered the indictment with inflammatory, untrue and irrelevant allegations," John Potter, Nicholas' lead attorney on the drug case told us in September.

Prosecutorial misconduct and the shenanigans of manipulating the jury pool are not new. And as this blog has noted, from Maine to Alaska, the vindictive nature of many Rove Republican Racket prosecutors has no basis in law, but is based on partisan politics or simple envy.

"Shameful" Campaign Leads to More Dismissals in California

As we reported on Monday, the Rove Republican Racket was given a huge setback when a federal judge in the bastion of Republican politics, Orange County, California, dismissed charged and vacated a guilty plea of Henry Samueli, a technology company executive and owner of the Anaheim Ducks hockey team.

Federal prosecutors were accused of prosecutorial misconduct which including leaking grand jury testimony and intimidating plaintiffs in regards to the case against technology firm, Broadcom.

Now two more Broadcom executives who worked with Samueli saw criminal charges against them tossed out yesterday.

The Los Angeles Times reports today:

Accusing prosecutors of a "shameful" campaign to intimidate witnesses and obtain unjustified convictions, a federal judge threw out high-profile criminal stock fraud charges against Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry T. Nicholas III and the company's former chief financial officer. U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney issued his ruling Tuesday, less than a week after he overturned a guilty plea by company co-founder and Anaheim Ducks owner Henry Samueli

The judge also dismissed a civil lawsuit that the Securities and Exchange Commission had filed against Broadcom executives, wiping away misconduct allegations that had plagued the Irvine-based microchip giant for years. Samueli and Nicholas, both in the Santa Ana courtroom, embraced and sobbed. William J. Ruehle, the chief financial officer, thanked Carney and then hugged his attorney, Richard Marmaro. "It's the ultimate vindication for Broadcom," Samueli told reporters outside Carney's courtroom. "To see Broadcom's name smeared was so painful to me."

Media Leaks Lead to Stunning Dismissal

The U.S. Government suffered a "stunning" dismissal of a guilty plea last week of Henry Samueli (pictured), owner of the Anaheim Ducks hockey team, after Assistant U.S. Attorneys were accused of engaging in prosecutorial misconduct: intimidating defendants and leaking information to the media.

All of this happened in the heart of the Rove-Bush-Cheney Republican world: Orange County, California.

According to the Orange County Register:

A federal judge's decision to toss the guilty plea of Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry Samueli – in the middle of the trial of another defendant – was highly unusual and has implications for related cases, lawyers unconnected to the case said today. "I have never, ever heard of this from any judge anywhere in the country," said Lawrence Rosenthal, a former federal prosecutor who is a professor at Chapman University School of Law in Orange. "It is stunning." After hearing Samueli's testimony, and without giving prosecutors a chance to argue, Carney told Samueli on Wednesday that he was setting aside his guilty plea and throwing out the criminal charge against him of lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission. John Hueston, a former top federal prosecutor in Orange County who now does white-collar defense work, said Carney's ruling was "virtually unprecedented and extraordinary." "Here, the defense effectively put the government on trial but was aided by some real-time misconduct by the government during the trial itself," Hueston said.

Bloomberg news wire gives more details and insight:

“I’ve looked at the plea agreement, I’ve listened to your testimony, and you didn’t make a false material statement,” Carney told Samueli, according to a transcript of the proceeding. Carney said that answers Samueli provided to the SEC may have appeared evasive and non-responsive. Based on Samueli’s testimony in court, those answers were truthful, the judge said. Samueli could have faced five years in prison for making a material false statement which his response to the SEC’s questions didn’t justify, Carney said.

“The fact that you truly understood what happened here means a lot to me,” Samueli said to the judge according to the transcript. “You have restored my faith in the criminal justice system, and I must be honest, that faith was shaken in the early days of this whole process.” Carney said he was “a little bit disturbed” by the way the government had treated Samueli and that he would take appropriate action at the appropriate time. The judge earlier agreed to Samueli’s request to bar one prosecutor from cross- examining him because he allegedly leaked information about Samueli’s grand jury testimony to reporters.

Media leaks to traditional reporters and bloggers appears to be standard operating procedure for many corrupt Assistant U.S. Attorneys in the Rove Republican Racket.who wish to influence the jury pool.

Readers may recall that big-mouth New Jersey U.S. Attorney or that leaky U.S. Attorney's office in Mississippi.