The hits just keep on coming: U.S. Attorney scandal reaches Mississippi

October 11, 2007

As the U.S. Attorney scandal has unfolded over the course of the year, there’s been no shortage of questions about prosecutors who brought dubious charges against Democrats, looked the other way on wrongdoing by Republicans, or both. Thanks to Bush’s White House and Justice Department, the notion of equal-justice under the law hasn’t been this shaky in generations.

Worse, the examples highlighting the Bush gang’s politicization of law enforcement never seem to end. Today, the NYT’s Adam Cohen offers the latest, this time from Mississippi.

In 2003, Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove (D) was seeking a second term, taking on Republican lobbyist Haley Barbour. Republicans wanted some way to discredit Musgrove’s allies, while limiting campaign contributions from Democratic supporters. So, they prosecuted Paul Minor, a trial attorney who has contributed generously to Democrats over the years.

Mr. Minor’s political activity may have cost him dearly. He is serving an 11-year sentence, convicted of a crime that does not look much like a crime at all. The case is one of several new ones coming to light that suggest that the department’s use of criminal prosecutions to help Republicans win elections may go farther than anyone realizes. […]

Mr. Minor, whose firm made more than $70 million in fees in his state’s tobacco settlement, suspects it was his role in the 2000 Mississippi Supreme Court elections that put a target on his back. The United States Chamber of Commerce spent heavily to secure a Republican, pro-business majority, while Mr. Minor contributed heavily to the other side.

The chamber was especially eager to unseat Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., a former trial lawyer. He was re-elected after a hard-fought, high-spending campaign. Then the prosecutions came from the politicized Bush Justice Department.

It follows a familiar pattern — using federal prosecution power to help Republicans win elections. In this case, it gets worse.

Mississippi’s loose campaign finance laws allow lawyers and companies to contribute heavily to the judges they appear before. That is terrible for justice, since the courts are teeming with perfectly legal conflicts of interest. It also creates an ideal climate for partisan selective prosecution. Since everyone is making contributions and nurturing friendships that look questionable, a prosecutor can haul any lawyer and judge he doesn’t like before a grand jury and charge corruption.

The Justice Department indicted Justice Diaz and Mr. Minor on an array of unconvincing bribery and fraud charges. Justice Diaz was acquitted of all of them. The federal prosecutors then brought tax evasion charges against him. Justice Diaz was acquitted again and still sits on the Mississippi Supreme Court.

Mr. Minor was not as lucky. He beat many of the charges in the first trial, but the jury failed to reach a verdict on others. Federal prosecutors went after him again, and this time Mr. Minor was convicted on vague allegations of trying to get “an unfair advantage” from judges — the very thing Mississippi’s lax campaign finance laws are set up to allow.

The scheme paid off. Trial lawyers who didn’t want to be investigated for making legal contributions backed off, the Democratic Party in Mississippi suddenly didn’t have resources to compete, and GOP efforts to tie Gov. Musgrove to Minor and Diaz became a key campaign issue that helped Barbour take office.

Best of all, there were trial lawyers contributing to Mississippi Republicans, engaged in the exact same dynamic, all of which was ignored by prosecutors.

It’s possible that we’ll never know the full extent of the Bush administration’s corruption of the justice system, but it’s little wonder Republicans on the Hill don’t want Congress to find out.

Scott Horton over at Harpers has been doing the heavy lifting on this issue.

  • If Gonzo is indicted, and the Dim-Dems somehow manage a broader investigation of Rethug corruption of the DOJ then this issue may reach critical mass, but it won’t happen quickly. Short of that the MSM will largely ignore it as just so much ho-hum business as usual. Of course for the Rethugs these days it IS just business as usual.

    Most people don’t understand how their own government is supposed to work, nor do they value the Constitution as the guarentor of their civil rights or their right to equal justice under the law. So how are they supposed to understand how the Rethugs have subverted the entire government into a machine that rewards the party faithful and creates and enforces one-party rule? The Dems used to be famous for creating similar machines in big cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis and San Francisco, but the Rethugs have taken it to the national level like never before, and it will years if not decades before we learn just how much they have befouled the political culture of this country. That is, assuming they lose control and we find out.

  • Here’s the link to the Harper’s piece by Scott Horton

    http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/10/hbc-90001396

    He throws in another interesting angle, that the local press was also involved in the Republican operation:

    We should also consider the role played by the Birmingham News and the Mobile Press-Register in this entire affair, including their reporting in the last couple of days. Given these recent revelations it seems to me that these papers were active participants in the cover-up and in the original plan to take down Siegelman. Indeed, the News’s earlier reporting can now be understood to include a fairly pathetic effort to construct a defense for Rob Riley based on a differing understanding of who “Karl” was.

    For months, the Alabama Republican machine has attempted to brush off claims about Rove’s involvement as some sort of fantastic speculation. Those efforts have just been exploded. We are one step closer to understanding why Karl Rove left the White House, and perhaps also why Alberto Gonzales stepped down as attorney general. The Siegelman case is emerging, as we predicted, as the most damning exhibit yet in the story of the Bush Administration’s use of the Justice Department as a partisan political tool.

  • Political prisoners in America. Welcome to the USSR of A!
    Remember…the Republican’ts want a one party system…permanent majority.

  • So does this just remain a story or is congress doing something about it? Is there a committee investigating…is Leahy doing anything about the ifnored subpoenas of Miers, Rove and others…what about Rice? Has everything come to a halt since Gonzo is out or what?
    Attacking donors to the Democratic party and threatening potential donors must be stopped. Not only is Bush wire tapping them at will with no oversight, now he’s using the DoJ to blackmail them into submission.
    Pelosi and a few others will be the only ones left and she will still be saying impeachment is off the table…just pathetic. Her narrow minded stubbornness is obstructing justice. Another DC insider whose money is secure.

  • “BUSH HAS TURN THE WHITE HOUSE INTO A DEN OF THIEVES”
    President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their executioner Lieutenant Rove have disregarded the values so cherished by the Republican Party. Their ideology have been to channel millions of dollars to those party members who have pledged total absolute loyalty to the Bush administration. This includes creating/channeling campaign funds for their elections, making appointments of the undeserving and/or unqualified boot lickers to high Federal offices and awarding large military/government contracts to thousands of companies that are owned directly or indirectly by his supporters. Many of these contracting companies are sham organizations and/or have no accountability.

    We in the “South Eastern States” have surely suffered the most from the presidency of Bush. We are facing a very serious dilemma; we have a new strain of government corruption that is immune to the antibodies of the justice system as defined by the constitution which incudes: (a) Election fraud, (b) political favors for illegal campaign contributions (large oil companies, Tobacco Companies, Gambling Casinos, etc.), ( c) corrupt Bush appointed U.S Attorneys that spend millions of dollars profiling high ranking Democrats so that their offices can be freed up for a Bush operative and (d) Bush appointed U.S. Judges that removes the threat of a political comeback by giving maximum sentences with appeal denials and highly restricted/screened prison correspondence.

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