Another resignation of a top official at Dept. of Justice involved in U.S. Attorney scandal
A late Friday afternoon resignation at the U.S. Department of Justice. And, guess what? It's yet another top DOJ staffer who was caught up in the firing of the U.S. Attorneys scandal -- Mike Elston:
A senior Justice Department official who helped carry out the firings of eight U.S. attorneys said Friday he is resigning.
Mike Elston, chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, is the fifth Justice official to leave after being linked to the dismissals of the prosecutors.
Sen. Schumer is right
Gonzales has hurt the Justice Department. But it must not be forgot that Bush put him there and keeps him there, Justice and nation be damned.
By AARON BEARD, Associated
By AARON BEARD, Associated Press Writer Sat Jun 16, 7:10 PM ET
RALEIGH, N.C. - District Attorney Mike Nifong will be disbarred for his disastrous prosecution of three Duke University lacrosse players falsely accused of rape, a disciplinary committee decided Saturday. Even the veteran prosecutor said the punishment was appropriate.
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"This matter has been a fiasco. There's no doubt about it," said committee chairman F. Lane Williamson.
Nifong sat motionless, one hand resting over his mouth, as Williamson recounted how he engaged in dishonest and deceitful conduct. He said Nifong's early comments about the case — which included a confident proclamation that he wouldn't allow Durham to become known for "a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl" — were purposefully designed to boost his campaign for district attorney.
"At the time he was facing a primary, and yes, he was politically naive," Williamson said. "But we can draw no other conclusion that those initial statements he made were to further his political ambitions."
Nifong will not appeal the punishment, his lawyer said.
Jun 15, 12:40 PM (ET) By
Jun 15, 12:40 PM (ET)
By MATT APUZZO
WASHINGTON (AP) - It was a $100 million mistake, and a federal judge said Friday he doesn't have the power to fix it.
The Justice Department goofed last year and cited the wrong law in a binding plea agreement with telecommunication entrepreneur Walter Anderson, the largest tax scofflaw in U.S. history. That mistake made it impossible for the government to recover between $100 million and $175 million, U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman said in March.
Prosecutors urged him to reconsider but Friedman reluctantly said Friday that his hands were tied.
"The court is not free to read something into a contract that is not there or to interpret uncertain language in the government's favor," Friedman said.
Though prosecutors described the error as "a typo" and not "something that the court should be getting wrapped up about," Friedman reluctantly said his hands were tied.
He said he would have worked around the problem by ordering Anderson to repay the money as part of his probation. But prosecutors omitted any discussion of probation - a common element of plea deals - from Anderson's paperwork.
Friedman sentenced Anderson in March to nine years in prison ordered him to repay $23 million to the District of Columbia but ordered no restitution to the federal government.
"typos"
One gets the feeling that these sort of mistakes could be avoided. It seems that diligent proofreading would catch these sort of "typos". It seems that the public must get used to "breaches" in levees and in our Justice Department.We have, however, the satisfaction of seeing this person go to prison.
Unless, of course, he gets pardoned by Bush.
Typos
That is assuming that given the current state of the Justice Department the matter can be assumed to be a honest mistake. Compare and contrast.
“June 15, 2007
Justices, 5-4, Accept No Excuses From Inmate for Mistaken Late Filing of an Appeal
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON, June 14 — A narrow Supreme Court majority on Thursday agreed that a lower court properly dismissed the appeal of a man who missed a federal filing deadline by three days because of a federal district judge’s erroneous instructions.
The defendant, Keith Bowles, who is serving a sentence of 15 years to life for murder, had argued that given the judge’s erroneous instruction — that he had 18 days to file an appeal instead of the 14 that federal law allows — his case should come within the “unique circumstances” doctrine that the Supreme Court created to recognize unusual instances when jurisdictional rules need not be strictly enforced.
The court, however, used the case to announce it was overruling the two precedents the Supreme Court had used when it established the “unique circumstances” doctrine in the 1960s. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said the court now regarded the doctrine as illegitimate. “If rigorous rules like the one applied today are thought to be inequitable,” Justice Thomas added, the remedy should come from Congress.
Justice David H. Souter, writing for the four dissenters in the case, Bowles v. Russell, No. 06-5306, objected that “it is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way.” He added, “There is not even a technical justification for condoning this bait and switch.”
The court’s 5-to-4 division was the familiar one: Justice Thomas was joined in the majority by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr., while Justice Souter’s fellow dissenters were Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.”
In one case we have a Judge who can not look past the 4 corners of an unambiguous contract especially to provide relief to the idiot attorney who drafted it and in the other the “complex” Justice Thomas says the defense must move to amend a judgement to correct a meaningless error that is in their favor or their client to goes to jail for 15 years.
letter of the Law
It might be that a number of appeals involving the administration and/or administration officials will reach the Supreme Court in the next several years, and the present Court Majority will have further opportunity to uphold their new doctrine of "strictness".
Unless they determine some good cause for overturning "mistakes" of lower courts.
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Justice Dept. Seeking
Justice Dept. Seeking Replacements for Departing Temporary Prosecutors
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 17, 2007
The Justice Department is scrambling to find willing replacements for nearly two dozen temporary U.S. attorneys, whose time in office is now limited under a law signed last week by President Bush.
The developments add to growing personnel problems at the Justice Department in the wake of last year's firings of nine U.S. attorneys, which led to a political confrontation with Congress, lowered morale and contributed to an exodus of officials from the upper ranks of the department.
"If we had a credible attorney general at the helm, we wouldn't be scrambling to fill vacancies," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, right, with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. "Instead, top legal talent would be flocking to the department." (By Alex Wong -- Getty Images)
U.S. attorney's offices with temporary appointments:
A quarter of all federal prosecutors are now on the job on an interim or acting basis -- reflecting a vacancy rate that is much higher than normal, according to department statistics. Five senior Justice Department officials have also resigned since March, including one who announced his departure Friday.
"There are certainly a lot of vacancies, even for the end of an administration," said Dennis Boyd, executive director of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys. "For some turnover to be occurring is not that big of a surprise, but the department has handled . . . [the prosecutor firings] so poorly that you're left with an unusual situation."
The situation became more complicated this week, when Bush signed a bill overturning legislation that allowed Gonzales to appoint interim prosecutors for an indefinite period. Without that authority, the Justice Department has 120 days to fill vacancies with nominees subject to Senate confirmation, or appointees will named by local federal courts.
The provision allowing indefinite interim appointments was slipped largely unnoticed into a USA Patriot Act reauthorization bill in March 2006. Gonzales's aides subsequently discussed using it to bypass the Democratic congressional delegation from Arkansas to appoint a former White House aide as interim U.S. attorney in Little Rock, according to e-mails turned over to congressional investigators