U.S. Attorney Should Resign or be Fired

U. S. Attorney of the Northern District of Mississippi Jim Greenlee has done it again and topped them all!

As you may recall, this same prosecutor recently dropped the ball 27 times in a high-profile criminal case. Greenlee also authorized the ridiculous immunity deal for Pied Piper Ed Peters, a corrupt former DA from Mississippi who has taken everyone for a ride.

Now, today, comes breaking news that Greenlee targeted Middle Eastern business operators in the post 9/11 hysteria even though there were no links to terrorism.

According to the Clarion Ledger:

The U.S. attorney's office in Oxford targeted convenience store operators in north Mississippi, many of Middle Eastern descent, despite a lack of any connection to terrorism, according to documents obtained by The Clarion-Ledger. The Convenience Store Initiative arose from meetings with local law enforcement officers in the years following 9-11 - when Middle Eastern terrorists flew hijacked planes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center Twin Towers.

U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee of Oxford said the government was "looking to see any links to terrorism, but what we found was criminal conduct." Instead of arrests for alleged terrorist plots, state and federal officials since 2006 have charged more than 60 people in Mississippi with such illegal acts as the sale of excessive amounts of pseudoephedrine - used to make meth. Those who ran the Convenience Store Initiative say the FBI found nothing wrong with the initiative, which arose from tips from local law enforcement. In fact, they say the Justice Department in the Bush administration praised the concept.

Those involved in the initiative say the money from the illegal activity was being sent back overseas, where it couldn't be traced and possibly could have gone to funding terrorism. But they acknowledged the money could have gone to relatives instead. Greenlee denied the suggestion those of Middle Eastern descent were targeted. "Did we look at it from an improper purpose? No," he said.

Improper purpose? Absolutely! These business operators had no links whatsoever to terrorism except being , as they say in backwards Mississippi, "colored."

Instead of finding any problems or links with terrorism, Greenlee busted eight store operators who sold too much cold medicine in an entrapment scheme the feds set up.

This is typical of hillbilly Mississippi: target the "coloreds and foreigners" on a cooked up hysteria terrorism charge and then throw the book at them on something else since you couldn't find anything to begin with.

Greenlee, who probably thought of this "brilliant" idea while buying a cup of coffee from a Middle Eastern looking-fellow at a Kangaroo Express in Oxford, should immediately resign or be fired by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Read the full story here.

Fired by Rove, U.S. Attorney Gets Old Job Back

From the Associated Press:

Daniel Bogden never really got a good answer why President George W. Bush fired him from his post as U.S. attorney for Nevada in 2006. But it doesn't matter to Bogden anymore. He's got his old job back.

"It's my decision to move forward as U.S. attorney and not dwell in the past," Bogden said as he prepares to become the only one of nine federal prosecutors ousted in 2006 to return to his appointed post. He expects to begin before Oct. 10.

"I did not do anything wrong that merited my firing without notice," said Bogden, a 53-year-old career criminal prosecutor who measures words and their meaning and calls himself politically nonpartisan. Bush nominated him in 2001 at the suggestion of Republican U.S. Sen. John Ensign of Nevada.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, wanted Bodgen to return to his old post to "right the wrong" of his dismissal, said Reid's spokesman, Jon Summers. President Obama gave his blessing, and the Senate confirmed Bodgen on Sept. 15.

A Justice Department inspector general's investigation concluded that the 2006 purge of Bogden and top federal prosecutors in Arkansas, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Phoenix, Seattle, San Diego and San Francisco was "unsystematic and arbitrary."

Rove's Goal: Staying in Power

Wayne Slater, political columnist of the Dallas Morning News, (pictured) writes an interesting analysis of Karl Rove based on the book by Matt Latimer.

Slater writes, "There is a view that Rove's politics were never about advancing conservatism, but staying in power. He was about winning – every dispute, every point, every difference, even if it meant dividing your own team."

With the take-over of the U.S. Department of Justice in 2006, Rove was able to gain political power by using criminal charges to go after political operatives in Alaska, Wisconsin, Alabama, California, Mississippi, Maine, and elsewhere.

Using the DOJ for political purposes was not a conservative position. It was shamefully about staying in power.

Read the entire analysis here.

Truthful, but Inaccurate

Earlier this month we posted a story about prosecutorial misconduct by an Assistant U.S. Attorney who works under respected U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago.

Now it looks like Fitzgerald's office is defending their own, claiming in a new filing that "no finding of misconduct is justified" and that the witness who allegedly lied was being "truthful, but inaccurate."

Law.com writes:

Federal prosecutors in Chicago have asked a judge to reconsider her ruling last month that four convicted drug traffickers deserve a new trial because prosecutors engaged in misconduct. The prosecutors from U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's office on Sept. 18 filed a motion for reconsideration in the case, telling U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow that the government witness who she determined gave false testimony at the trial actually "was truthful, but inaccurate." When taking into account additional evidence not cited in Lefkow's decision and viewing the case as a whole, no finding of misconduct is justified, the prosecutors argued.

How many times have federal prosecutors been "truthful, but inaccurate" when they go after innocent victims who eventually plead out?

How many members of the Rove Republican Racket created "truthful, but inaccurate" accusations against prominent Democrats in an attempt to silence their political activism?

"Truthful, but inaccurate" is lawyerspeak for justifying a lie or falsehood and prosecutorial misconduct. A lie is a lie is a lie.

Read the whole article here.

Rove's Hiring Practices

Matt Latimer, the former speechwriter to President George W. Bush, has made political headlines recently with excerpts from a new book he has written about his days in the Rove-Bush-Cheney Administration.

But tonight, in a an op-ed written for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Latimer gives insight into the incompetent hiring practices by the Rove Republican Racket.

Appropriately titled "GOP Succumbed to Unchecked Power," Latimer writes:

Every administration politicizes hiring to a degree, but some in the Bush administration went beyond the pale. Much is known about the political firings of U.S. attorneys and the party-line enforcers who removed or intimidated qualified personnel at the Justice Department. Less well known is what happened outside Justice. For nearly three years at the Defense Department, I saw young, inexperienced political operatives enjoy nearly unrestrained power. Like schoolyard bullies who picked on people because they could, these operatives pursued personal vendettas, blocked hirings, delayed promotions and pressured high-ranking officials. Backed by the White House political shop, some operatives refused to hire experienced communicators to help the president and the defense secretary work effectively on Afghanistan and Iraq. They insisted on hiring friends or mediocre candidates from a White House-approved list.

And we wonder why DOJ or DOD went to hell during the Bush years?

Read the full op-ed here.

Explicit, Unequivocal Evidence Against the Rove Racket

The ethical lapses of the Rove's brigade of politically-charged U.S. Attorneys are coming out in the open and providing a black-eye to our system of justice.

We have written about the remnants left over by the Bush Administration, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, and their lack of ethics, temperance, and fairness.

Today, new developments from Alabama highlight these problems.

The Queen of the Rove Republican Racket, former U.S. Attorney Alice H. Martin of the Northern District of Alabama, and her subordinates (Assistant U.S. Attorneys) allegedly "failed to disclose exculpatory information about a government contractor who stood trial in 2007 on arms control charges, defense lawyers said in a court filing last week, citing newly disclosed emails," according to a post today on the Main Justice website.

Main Justice writes:

Lawyers for Alex Latifi wrote...that former U.S. Attorney Alice Martin and two Assistant U.S. Attorneys violated their Brady obligations by withholding information from the defense. Latifi was acquitted in October 2007 of charges that he violated the Arms Export Control Act. Prosecutors alleged that Latifi falsified a report to the Defense Department and sent a drawing of a Black Hawk helicopter part to China. He is CEO of Axion Corp., which manufactured military equipment, including Humvee machine-gun mounts. The defense team ... said they have “explicit, unequivocal evidence” that Assistant U.S. Attorneys David Estes and Angela Debro and Army investigators David Balwinski and Marcus Mills allegedly conspired with trial witness James Oglesby to conceal evidence and defraud the court.“All of these individuals sought to present false evidence to the court with the hope of convicting defendants of a crime they knew defendants had not committed,” the defense filing says.

Now, every case that Assistant U.S. Attorneys David Estes and Angela Debro have been involved with are now suspect. What other evidence in the the past has been concealed? How many times has the court been defrauded?

The Rove-Bush-Cheney legacy is a legal nightmare ready to implode.

Read the full story here.

Hide and Seek on Immunity Deal

The soap opera surrounding the ridiculous immunity deal given to the corrupt former DA from Mississippi, Ed "Pied Piper" Peters took a more interesting turn yesterday.

The Mississippi Litigation Review run by Philip Thomas wrote and posted the following:

A few weeks ago I made a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Justice seeking a copy of the government's immunity agreement with Ed Peters. DOJ refused my request. Here is a copy of DOJ's refusal letter. According to the DOJ, I am not entitled to the information because Peters did not consent and there was no showing that the public disclosure outweighs Peters' privacy interests. My request letter to the DOJ did not identify a public interest for the disclosure. My limited research on the topic, however, suggests that this is not the type of private information that the privacy act was designed to protect. In addition, it's my understanding that the government should produce the information with the private information redacted. The suggestion that the public in not interested in the Peters immunity deal is a joke. I suspect that the DOJ does not want to produce the agreement because it is embarrassed that DOJ granted Peters immunity. My informal reading of public opinion both in and outside the bar is that Peters should have been prosecuted.

A joke it is!

As we said in an earlier post, U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee made a monstrous, Mississippi mistake. Greenlee, the same sloppy prosecutor who recently dropped the ball 27 times in a highly-publicized criminal case, is an agent of the Rove Republican Racket and gave Peters a free ride: 100-percent immunity in a judicial bribery scandal and partial reimbursement of $1 million in proceeds from the same bribe.

Now Greenlee and his staff are hiding their tracks. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder should force the DOJ to release the documents related to this half-baked deal. Read more about the Pied Piper Peters here.