Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Did the Justice Department Slow Prosecutions of Republicans?

See this post at TPM. From Josh Marshall's post:

That said, there's been such an avalanche of developments in recent days and weeks, that I think it's now quite reasonable to conclude that the turnaround is related to the fact that Gonzales and his crew are flat on their backs and aren't able to block them any more. This is the sort of question or charge people only make sheepishly and with some embarrassment. I've been reluctant to come to this conclusion as well. But now I think there are solid reasons to believe this is true.

It may seem like a leap. But there's more circumstantial evidence for it than you might think.

We already know, for instance, that Main Justice made Carol Lam wait months for permission to issue indictments against the crooks and bribers in the Cunningham investigation. Today we learned that DOJ sources are coming forward to say that Main Justice was playing a very similar game in Arizona with the Renzi investigation. And remember, that US Attorney, Paul Charlton, got canned just like Lam.

We now have some good evidence of a pattern of 'soft' obstruction of Republican corruption investigations by officials at Main Justice -- in the Cunningham-Lewis-Wilkes-Foggo investigation and the Renzi probe. If that's their MO, it shouldn't surprise us to learn they've done the same in the Abramoff probe. Nor should it surprise us that Gonzales's slow-motion fall -- along with the resignations of Sampson, Goodling and others -- is opening up the flood gates.

No comments: