Of all the dubious firings of purged prosecutors, it seems former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton is probably getting the least amount of attention. That’s a shame; his story is about as bizarre as his colleagues’.
Paul Kiel points to this Arizona Republic piece with details that should raise a few eyebrows.
Two weeks after Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton was ordered to give up his post, he sent an e-mail to a top Justice Department official asking how to handle questions that his ouster was connected to his investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz.
Charlton, one of eight federal prosecutors forced to resign last year, never received a written response….
When the first list of U.S. attorneys targeted for ouster was drafted, Charlton’s name was not on it. But his name was on a subsequent list, drafted in September. Although the Renzi inquiry was not yet public, it is likely the Justice Department was aware of the investigation, said a former U.S. attorney who is familiar with the protocol when a sitting lawmaker is involved.
It’s hardly a leap to see the connection.
As Max Blumenthal explained, Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) was in a competitive re-election race. When evidence of influence-peddling and land deals emerged in September 2006, just weeks before Election Day, Charlton opened a preliminary investigation. Around the same time, Kyle Sampson identified Charlton as someone “we should now consider pushing out.” A month after the election, Charlton was fired without explanation.
Wait, it gets better.
Does the “performance-related” claim have merit here? Hardly. As Blumenthal’s article explained, “A model of professionalism, Charlton’s office was honored with the Federal Service Award and hailed by the Justice Department as a ‘Model Program’ for its protection of crime victims.”
Instead, the administration relied on a Justice Department official named Brent Ward, who insisted that Charlton was “unwilling to take good cases.” That’s when the story gets even more interesting.
Ward first came to prominence in Utah, where as US Attorney during the Reagan era he cast himself as a crusader against pornography. His battles made him one of the most fervent and earnest witnesses before Attorney General Edwin Meese’s Commission on Pornography; he urged “testing the endurance” of pornographers by relentless prosecutions. Meese was so impressed that he named Ward a leader of a group of US Attorneys engaged in a federal anti-pornography campaign, which soon disappeared into the back rooms of adult bookshops to ferret out evildoers. Ward returned to government last year as the chief of the Justice Department’s newly created Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, where his main achievement has been the prosecution of the producer of the Girls Gone Wild film series.
The appointment of the obscure Ward was a sop to the Christian right. His accomplishments, such as they are, have been symbolic at best. But when a paper trail to support the charge that US Attorneys were deficient in their performance was required to cover the reality of political dismissals, the Justice Department finally discovered an important use for its top porn cop.
Regular readers may recall that I recently wrote an item on Ward, whose focus is on targeting sexual media for consenting adults. In the purge-scandal context, Ward badgered the U.S. Attorneys’ office about bringing more pornography cases, none of which had anything to do with child porn, and everything to do regular ol’ adult porn.
Apparently, these are the “good cases” Charlton was unwilling to take.
I knew if we waited long enough, there’d be a sex angle to this controversy.