The [tag]Bush administration[/tag]’s deal with the [tag]tobacco industry[/tag] in 2005 has always been curious. As you may recall, the government, for reasons that no one could explain, asked the industry to pay $10 billion, instead of the $130 billion previously recommended by a government expert witness, at the conclusion of a massive racketeering trial.
Today, we’re starting to learn why events unfolded as they did.
The leader of the [tag]Justice Department[/tag] team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government’s racketeering case.
Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s office began micromanaging the team’s strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government’s claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers.
She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty. He and two others instructed her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony….
“The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said,” Eubanks said. “And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public.”
She added that she was ordered to read, word for word, a closing argument they had rewritten to meet the administration’s political agenda, including a rationalization for a $10 billion penalty, instead of $130 billion. Eubanks said, “I couldn’t even look at the judge.”
What’s more, Eubanks, the first time that any of the government lawyers on the case spoke at length publicly about political interference, said the problems in the tobacco case are symptomatic of a systemic problem at Bush’s Justice Department.
Eubanks, who retired from Justice in December 2005, said she is coming forward now because she is concerned about what she called the “overwhelming politicization” of the department demonstrated by the controversy over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Lawyers from Justice’s civil rights division have made similar claims about being overruled by supervisors in the past.
Eubanks said Congress should not limit its investigation to the dismissal of the U.S. attorneys.
“Political interference is happening at Justice across the department,” she said. “When decisions are made now in the Bush attorney general’s office, politics is the primary consideration…. The rule of law goes out the window.”
If I only had a nickel for every time I’ve seen that phrase in relation to the Bush gang.